The history of modern solar cells starts in 1950s from the Bell Laboratory, when the first solar cells capable to convert sun energy into electricity were produced. From that time Photovoltaic (PV) technologies gained very rapid development. In the last few years PVs have evolved from the small scale applications towards becoming a mainstream electricity source and one of the most promising sources of renewable energy. Although current PV systems can generate electricity in an efficient manner, techno-economic analysis of photovoltaic energy shows the necessity to reduce the manufacturing cost of PV systems. Third generation photovoltaics attracts a lot of attention due to their great potential for low cost and large scale production. The key advantage of emerging PV technologies, such as Organic and Perovskite Solar Cells, is that they can be fabricated with well-known roll-to-roll (R2R) printing and coating technologies. Utilization of R2R deposition contributes to the reduction of manufacturing cost which definitely will speed up the commercialization process.

The main challenge today is how to move from lab scale devices to the devices manufactured on an industrial level. In order to fill the gap between the laboratory development and future industrial manufacturing, still a lot of research and developments are required. On the transition stage from the lab to fab a strong link between fundamental academic aspects and semi-industrial issues is observed. The most challenging issues related to the up-scaling will be highlighted, and the possible solutions will be proposed. The progress on the up-scaling organic and perovskite PV technologies will be presented. Apart from the fabrication issues, the close look will be made on the optimization of light management, interconnection, module design and encapsulation. Current research and developments are aimed to satisfy three main requirements towards commercialization of emerging PV modules: low cost, high efficiency, and high operational stability. Although a huge step towards the viable manufacturing already has been done, there are still a lot of challenging issues need to be solved before industrialization of these PV technologies. And at the end of the talk several challenging topics for future developments will be highlighted. The talk will show how the fundamental knowledge can contribute to answering global societal challenges such as the development emerging renewable energy sources.