There's no need to fully develop another iteration of solar panels, what it needs to do is to make it more commercial because it's still expensive as it was first released to the public, and we don't need to just focus on these things, we need storage for energy because most energy that is harvested is either wasted or dissipates over time because there's no proper storage for it.
It needs to be more efficient, the first capital required to make it work is still quite expensive, and it is very hard for cities to use it because we just have tall buildings that use a lot of electric and solar can't cover all of that for a building even if you had a solar panel roof. So, it is going to be improving a lot both amount of energy created from a smaller space, but also the capital required for it as well. All the R&D on the solar panels are exactly like that, it is not going to be that much of a difference for now because it is not something that gets better overnight, but in 10-20 years we are going to look at today's tech and realize how horrible it was.
The problem is that the coals, the oils, the gas types of the world are ruining the climate of the world and we do not have too much time, unfortunately since renewable energy is very expensive, people literally let the world die before they spend a few more thousand dollars.