NEW SEMICONDUCTOR MATERIALS AND STRUCTURES FOR PHOTOVOLTAIC SOLAR ENERGY CONVERSION

The article gives an overview of the results of investigations carried out at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova and the Department of Physics of Moldova State University in the science and engineering of semiconductor materials and structures to be used in photovoltaic technologies for solar energy conversion. The current state in the fi eld is presented related to the importance of photovoltaics and its developments worldwide. In brief are exposed the original results of the authors of this paper, that deal with a number of compounds relevant for the cuttingedge photovoltaics: Cu(Inx Ga1-x)Se2 , Cu(In,Ga)mSen , CuIn(S,Se)2 , CuGa(S,Se)2 , β-FeSi2 , WS2 , MoS2 and ReS2 . Also, the description is given of the solar cells developed on the base of heterojunctions of CdSCdTe and CdS-CuInGaSe2 , of the mono- and bifacial silicon cells and modules with the semiconductorinsulator-semiconductor structures, fabricated using a cost-effective technology, in the laboratory conditions at the two institutions involved