The increased global demand for low-cost renewable energy sources has motivated scientists and engineers to derive and explore novel methods for converting solar energy into electricity. Among those methods, solar cell is one of the clean technologies that has been adopted to produce electricity. However, low efficiency, high cost associated with the preparation of materials and subsequent device fabrication prevented their extensive use to satisfy the growing demand. Hence the technologies based on silicon, organic solar cells, dye-sensitised solar cells or a combination of these two (hybrid solar cells) were developed, where the latter has gathered advantages from both inorganic and organic materials. In this article, the potential of hybrid solar cells over the other types are reviewed. Nanostructured morphologies with high surface area offer significant energy conversion efficiency. In this direction, industrially applicable electrospun nanofibers are more appropriate when compared to the other nano-fabrication technologies. Furthermore the ability of aligned nanofibers to provide higher solar conversion efficiency is discussed. We have also highlighted the fabrication of various nanostructures such as thin films, quantum dots, nanoparticles and composite nanofibers and juxtaposed their morphology with efficiency. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.