Economic context and resources
Nanostructures for inorganic photovoltaic cells

The question of raw materials, their accessibility and their prices is particularly changeable, and it is difficult to describe a general trend. For example, silicon, of which over 95% of solar panels on the market today are made, is the second most abundant element in the earth's crust. Nevertheless, it was included on the European Union's list of "critical" raw materials in 2020. because the scale of the current and future energy transition raises fears of supply problems that have much more to do with the difficulty of organizing industrial production on this scale so quickly than with the quantity of reserves available. Other rare...