Energy shortage has become a major obstacle to the current economic development, and is the focus of all countries in the world. As the source of a clean and renewable energy, solar cells are receiving more and more attention. It is of great significance to solve the energy crisis. Through the literature co-citation, TF*IDF and LLR algorithms as well as clustering analysis method, this article has analyzed the citation data and subject data of highly cited papers in the solar cell research field, identified the important academic papers, and then used the information visualization analysis software CiteSpace, and provided knowledge mapping analysis of five themes of solar cells research. The results show that high energy conversion of perovskite solar cell is the research frontier in the field of solar cell research. After further research on the clusters of intellectual base and the citing papers of research front, the research on the improvement of perovskite materials, hole transport materials, as well as the equipment and process for material preparation are summerived to develop perovskite solar cells with high conversion and low lost. The paper may offer the clues of decision-making and reference for domestic researchers to follow and to occupy the highland of the world’s development frontier in the field of solar cell.