In pursuit of increased efficiency and longer operating times of photovoltaic systems, one may encounter numerous difficulties in the form of defects that occur in both individual solar cells and whole modules. The causes of the occurrence range from structural defects to damage during assembly or, finally, wear and tear of the material due to operation. This article provides an overview of modern imaging methods used to detect various types of defects found in photovoltaic cells and panels. The first part reviews typical defects. The second part of the paper reviews imaging methods with examples of the authors’ own test results. The article concludes with recommendations and tables that provide a kind of comprehensive guide to the methods described, depending on the type of defects detected, the range of applicability, etc. The authors also shared their speculations on current trends and the possible path for further development and research in the field of solar cell defect analysis using imaging.

The paper contains a short literature review on the subject of special type of thin film structures with resistiveswitching memory effect. In the literature, such structures are commonly labeled as "memristors". The word "memristor" originates from two words: "memory" and "resistor". For the first time, the memristor was theoretically described in 1971 by Leon Chua as the 4th fundamental passive electronics element with a non-linear current-voltage behavior. The reported area of potential usage of memristor is enormous. It is predicted that the memristor could find application, for example in the domain of nonvolatile random access memory, flash memory, neuromorphic systems and so forth. However, in spite of the fact that plenty of papers have been published in the subject literature to date, the memristor still behaves as a "mysterious" electronic element. It seems that, one of the important reasons that such structures are not yet in practical use, is unsufficient knowledge of physical phenomena determining occurrence of the switching effect. The present paper contains a literature review of available descriptions of theoretical basis of the memristor structures, used materials, structure configurations and discussion about future prospects and limitations.

This paper takes a look at the state-of-the-art solutions in the field of spectral imaging systems by way of application examples. It is based on a comparison of currently used systems and the challenges they face, especially in the field of high-altitude imaging and satellite imaging, are discussed. Based on our own experience, an example of hyperspectral data processing is presented. The article also discusses how modern algorithms can help in understanding the data that such images can provide.