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Disruptive technology in photovoltaics Photographic films containing light-sensitive silver halides dominated photography until the early 21st century, but now have vanished from the market because of digital technology. The latter is termed a “disruptive technology.” The question is why and how technology disruption occurs. According to the theory of diffusion of innovations, which explains an epidemic-like spreading of new ideas and technologies,1 existing technology tends to undergo four stages of change—early adoption, rapid growth, maturity, and decline. At the maturity stage, typically, a new innovation is initiated that coexists with the old technology, but the transition is not continuous. In the early stages of the innovative technology, its performance and value are lower than the existing technology. However, the new technology eventually improves performance via breakthroughs, gains better value, and quickly disrupts the previous technology. How can we be aware of such technology disruption? We need a symptom that indicates technology disruption. In a chemical reaction, the reactant experiences and overcomes a transition state to be converted to the final product. For instance, to synthesize ethyl alcohol from bromoethane, the entering hydroxyl anion and the exiting bromide coexist at the high-energy transient state. In technology disruption, a hybrid state, similar to the transition state in a chemical reaction, is expected. For example, a hybrid car using both

gasoline and electricity represents the transition from the internal combustion engine vehicle to an electric vehicle, where the latter is the innovative new technology. In the field of energy, we currently use fossil fuels, which have caused a change in the climate due to massive carbon dioxide emissions. This will be disrupted by renewable energy, where emerging hybrid electricity uses renewable energy as an innovative technology. Solar cells represent a promising renewable energy source. Silicon-based solar cells currently dominate the photovoltaic (PV) market. However, silicon solar cells will likely be replaced with perovskite solar cells (PSCs) in the near future, with the intermediate step of the introduction of hybrid tandem solar cells and PSCs as the innovative technology. Because of lower costs and high power-conversion efficiencies (PCEs), with a certified value of 22.7% already surpassing the values for polycrystalline silicon and thin-film solar cells (22% ≤ PCE ≤ 22.7%),2 PSCs are regarded as a disruptive technology in PVs. According to the PV learning curve (average PV module price versus cumulative installation power of the PV module) in the International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaics,3 the calculated worldwide installed PV module power reached 402 GW at the end of 2017. This represents an increase of 100 GW as compared to the capacity of 303 GW in 2016. The PV module price, which is an average price for Si based

Nam-Gyu Park, School of Chemical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea; [email protected] doi:10.15