The photovoltaics industry and markets have been growing at a very high rate in the last few years. Shipments grew by an extraordinary 56% in 2007, and the five-year compound annual growth rate for the industry from 2002 to 2007 has been 44% with the industry capacity increasing by 69% in 2007. In this presentation the current status of photovoltaic technology and markets will be discussed. Benchmarking with the semiconductor (integrated circuit) industry will be discussed to determine what aspects of semiconductor technology and manufacturing practices could be profitably copied by the photovoltaic industry. Future directions of the technology, with specific focus on silicon based products and the challenges and opportunities in scale manufacture, efficiency enhancements and cost reductions will be discussed.

Dr.Ravi is responsible for Business Development for the Solar Business Group at Applied Materials. Prior to Applied Materials he was with Intel Corporation for over 10 years working primarily in the Materials Organization where his responsibilities have included the development of new silicon in support of Intel process technologies, developing low cost approaches for manufacturing silicon and the development of advanced substrates for future technologies. He has also worked in the Photovoltaics field for over 13 years at Mobil Solar Energy Corporation, leading the development of silicon ribbon based technologies. Ravi's other prior affiliations include Lockheed-Martin Corporation, Crystallume, Motorola Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. He is the author of over 100 technical publications in the fields of metals, semiconductors, photovoltaics and CVD diamond technology and the author of the book "Imperfections and Impurities in Semiconductor Silicon". He has a Ph.D in Materials Science from Case Western University, an M.S. in Materials Science from the University of California, Berkeley, a B.S in Metallurgy from the Indian Institute of Science and a B.Sc in Chemistry from the University of Madras, India.