Can impurities be beneficial to photovoltaics?

The state of the art of the intermedíate band solar cells is presented with emphasis on the use of impurities or alloys to form bulk intermedíate band materials. Quantum dot intermedíate band solar cells start to present already attractive efficiencies but many difficulties jeopardize the immediate achievement of record efficiency cells. To complement this research it is worthwhile examining bulk materials presenting an IB. Four or perhaps more materials have already proven to have it and several paths for the research of more are today open but no solar cell has yet been published based on them. This topic has already attracted many researches and abundant funds for their development worldwide.