Copper Indium Gallium Selenide Solar Cell

A copper indium gallium selenide solar cell, or CIGS cell, sometimes written CI(G)S or CIS cell, is a type of thin-film solar cell manufactured by depositing a thin layer of copper indium gallium selenide solid solution onto a glass or plastic backing, with electrodes on the front and back to collect the electric current. Because the material has a high absorption coefficient and strongly absorbs sunlight, a much thinner film is required than for other semiconductor materials. CIGS is one of three mainstream thin-film photovoltaic technologies, the other two being cadmium telluride and amorphous silicon, and like those materials its layers are thin enough to be flexible and can be deposited on flexible substrates; the best performance normally comes from cells deposited on glass using high-temperature deposition techniques, though advances in low-temperature deposition have narrowed much of that performance gap. CIGS outperforms polysilicon at the cell level, though its module efficiency is still lower because the technology is less mature at commercial scale.