Thin-Film Solar Cell

A thin film solar cell is a photovoltaic device built by depositing a light absorbing semiconductor layer, far thinner than the silicon wafer used in a conventional solar cell, onto a supporting substrate of glass, plastic or metal; the three materials produced commercially today are cadmium telluride, copper indium gallium diselenide, and amorphous silicon. ARCO Solar released the first commercial thin film product, an amorphous silicon panel called the G-4000, in 1986, more than a decade after Zhores Alferov research team built the first gallium arsenide solar cells in 1970, and by 1999 researchers at NREL and Spectrolab had pushed a three junction gallium arsenide thin film cell to 32 percent efficiency. As of 2021 thin film technologies held about 5 percent of the global photovoltaic market, though their share is much higher in the United States, where they accounted for roughly 19 percent of the total market and 30 percent of utility scale solar installations, with cadmium telluride cells alone making up 29 percent of utility scale deployments. Thin film cells trade some efficiency for lower material use and, in some designs, flexibility that rigid crystalline silicon panels cannot offer.