Photovoltaics are clean, abundant, and sustainable energy sources that has the potential to fulfill increasing global energy demand. A photovoltaic cell is a device that does the real work of converting solar energy to electrical energy. As solar photovoltaic will play a very crucial role in the future, it is essential to analyze and have comprehensive study based on materials and types of technologies. The paper presents a holistic review of three primary sol. Photovoltaics are clean, abundant, and sustainable energy sources that has the potential to fulfill increasing global energy demand. A photovoltaic cell is a device that does the real work of converting solar energy to electrical energy. As solar photovoltaic will play a very crucial role in the future, it is essential to analyze and have comprehensive study based on materials and types of technologies. The paper presents a holistic review of three primary solar photovoltaic technologies, the dominant crystalline silicon photovoltaic, thin-film photovoltaic, and much recent emerging photovoltaic. The need for the energy transformation, evolution of technology, cell materials, cell performance, global market share, cost, and different properties for the corresponding solar photovoltaic technologies are equally assessed. In addition to this, the benefits and challenges of each photovoltaics technology are also analyzed. The comparative study of different photovoltaic technologies will help the reader to explore potential research scopes in the field of materials, design, technologies, and improvement in energy conversion of different solar photovoltaic technologies.••Renewable energyPhotovoltaic materialsSolar photovoltaic technologiesEfficiencyThe serious environmental issues such as the greenhouse effect, pollutions generated by the burning of fuels, ozone layer depletion, etc. can be minimized by using renewable energies. Among all available renewable energies, the most potential and sustainable energy is the solar energy from the sun being the powerful, accessible and inexpensive source of energy. The solar photovoltaic (PV) is the device which does the actual work of conversion of the solar energy to electrical energy, offering benefits of being clean energy with rigorous development history, constantly declining manufacturing cost and continuously improving efficiency.The scientists in 1954 at Bell Laboratory created functioning solar cell from silicon which was soon used to power space satellite and applications in smaller electronic items,. The demand for solar PV is expanding for both residential and commercial requirements. Photovoltaics are most commercially viable today as it is coming out as a reasonable alternative for electricity production in a rising number of locations,. As per a recent forecast by International Energy Agency, the renewable energy market will pull off in coming five years causing increase in solar PV systems installations at homes, commercial and industrial applications. According to a report, from 2019 to 2024 globally renewable-based power capacity will rise by 50%, in which sola. The photovoltaic device is a solar cell often comprising of a layer of silicon designed in a manner to generate electricity with incident photons on it. The electricity generated by a solar cell is influenced by many factors like cell size, cell material, irradiance, environmental conditions, etc. The most conventional solar cells are crystalline s. A regular publication summarizing solar cell efficiencies of different solar cell technology is available wherein all efficiencies are tested and confirmed under standard test conditions of 1000 W/m2 irradiance with temperature of 25 °C (mentioned in IEC 60904–3: 2008, ASTM G-173–03 global) recognized by famous NREL(National Renewable Energy Laboratory), AIST(National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), JRC-ESTI (JRC-European Solar Test Installation), and FHG-ISE (Fraunhofer-Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE).The recorded cell efficiency according to the published report states the following observations can be seen in Fig. 2.,,.••The recorded cell efficiency of mono-crystalline silicon maintained 26.7 % for 2020 and 2021.••The recorded cell efficiency for thin film technologies - Amorphous silicon (10.
