The key to the idea was using active material that was relatively cheaper. It was an idea based on achieving low-cost photovoltaics that is suitable for mass production and development and energy-significant markets. The concept or the motivation to develop thin-film solar cells was coined dates back to the inception of photovoltaics. These solar cells save both materials and energy when producing cells and modules. Later, researchers developed one of the solutions to reduce this cost is by creating thin-film solar cells. One of the main obstacles that came in the way of large-scale production and expansion of photovoltaic (PV) systems has been the steep price of the solar cell modules. These technologies are often terms as the “third-generation photovoltaic cells,” including dye-sensitized, organic, quantum dot, perovskite, micromorph, copper-zinc, tin sulfide, and nanocrystal solar cells. There are various other thin-film technologies that have come up, and are still in their early stages of research or have limited commercial availability. Despite all these testing and development, the market share of thin-film cells has not gone beyond 20 percent during the last two decades and has dipped to about 9 percent in recent years considering the worldwide installations of photovoltaic solar cells. Under the laboratory condition, life-testing of thin-film modules shows that the degradation of these cells are faster compared to conventional PV, though the expected lifetime of these cells is 20 years or more. The efficiency for CdTe and CIGS cells is now over 21 percent, which has outperformed multi-crystalline silicon, the dominant material that is currently found in most solar PV systems. However, due to constant research and development, this technology has significantly improved over the years. The thin-film technology has been relatively economical, though have lesser efficiency compared to the traditional c-Si technology. Rigid thin-film cells have other commercial applications (inserting or interleaving between two panes of glass) in some of the largest photovoltaic power stations in the world. These are used in developing integrated photovoltaics and as semi-transparent, photovoltaic material that is possible to laminate and use in windows. Crystalline silicon solar cells have wafers of up to 200 µm thick.Ĭompared with the crystalline cells, thin-films are more flexible and lighter in weight. Due to this, thin-film solar cells are way thinner than the other contemporary technology, the conventional, first-generation crystalline silicon solar cell (c-Si). The thickness of the film thickness has variances from a few nanometers (nm) to tens of micrometers (µm). These solar cells are capable of converting solar energy to electrical energy by applying the principle of the photovoltaic effect. Thin-film solar cells have widespread commercial usage in several technologies such as copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), cadmium telluride (CdTe), and amorphous thin-film silicon (a-Si, TF-Si). Typically, these solar cells are created by depositing several layers of photon-absorbing materials layers of photovoltaic or PV materials on a substrate, including plastic, glass, or metal. Thin-film solar cells are developed by assembling thin-film solar cells. These layers are usually 300 – 350 times smaller than the layers of standard silicon panels. This is the reason why thin-film solar cells are also known as “Thin-film Photovoltaic Cell.” These solar cells have a very thin layer of thickness (few nanometers) compared to conventional P-N junction solar cells. Thin-film solar cells (TFSCs) are the second-generation solar cells that have multiple thin-film layers of photovoltaic or PV materials.
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