Thanks to fast learning and sustained growth, solar photovoltaics (PV) is today a highly cost-competitive technology, ready to contribute substantially to CO 2 emissions mitigation. However, many scenarios assessing global decarbonization pathways, either based on integrated assessment models or partial-equilibrium models, fail to identify the key role that this technology could play, including far lower future PV capacity than that projected by the PV community. In this perspective, we review the factors that lie behind the historical cost reductions of solar PV and identify innovations in the pipeline that could contribute to maintaining a high learning rate. We also aim at opening a constructive discussion among PV experts, modelers, and policymakers regarding how to improve the representation of this technology in the models and how to ensure that manufacturing and installation of solar PV-can ramp up on time, which will be crucial to remain in a decarbonization path compatible with the Paris Agreement.

We present quantitative measurements of the work function of semiconductor and metal surfaces prepared in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) using a combination of UHV noncontact atomic force microscopy and Kelvin probe force microscopy. High energetic and lateral resolution is achieved by using the second resonance frequency of the cantilever to measure the electrostatic forces, while the first resonance frequency is used to simultaneously obtain topographic images by the frequency modulation technique. Spatially resolved work-function measurements reveal a reduced work function in the vicinity of steps on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite. On the GaAs(110) surface it could be demonstrated that defect states in the forbidden band gap cause a local pinning of the Fermi level along monolayer steps. On p-WSe2(0001) work-function variations due to the Coulomb potential of single dopant sites were resolved.

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