Solar energy with the largest abundance among all renewables has been widely harvested through various technologies including photovoltaics, solar-thermal conversion, concentrated solar power, and solar chemical processes. The harvested clean energy has powered the world in numerous fields, including space heating and cooling, desalination, electricity generation, and fuel production. Since 2010, the total installed capacity of solar cells and solar-thermal panels has rapidly increased and reached more than 1000 GW by 2019. However, the share of solar energy in global primary energy consumption is only 1.1% in 2019. In this context, it is urgent to accelerate the large-scale deployment of current solar technologies and develop new solar harvesting processes.
Nanostructured thin films have been widely used in solar technologies, enabling high-efficiency, stable, and versatile solar energy harvesting devices. On the one hand, emerging solution-processed thin-film solar cells based on nano-structured materials such as perovskites and organic components have recently been intensively investigated due to their low cost and great scalability. On the other hand, solar-thermal energy conversion, which is a historic and widely used technology, benefits from spectrally selective absorbers based on nanostructured thin films, which are key components in solar thermal systems to maximize the conversion efficiency. In addition to selective absorbers, functional nano-structured thin films play important roles in specific solar thermal applications, such as steam generation, solar harvesting windows, anti-icing, and catalysis. In particular, nano-structured thin films with great scalability potential are highly desired to further push the largescale deployment of solar technologies forward.
The topic Editors welcome the submission of Original Research, Review, Mini Review, Perspective articles on solar energy-related studies, including, but not limited to:
· Scalable thin film solar cells and related functional components, including carrier transport layers, device design and innovation, device package and encapsulation
· Simulation, modeling, and experimental studies on spectrally selective absorbers/coatings
· Scalable functional thin films for specific solar-thermal applications such as steam generation, space heating, smart windows, solar-assisted anti-icing, and catalysis
· Strategies that can improve the scalability and/or reduce the cost of nanostructured thin films