Crystalline and thin-film silicon solar cells: state of the art and future potential

Bulk crystalline silicon solar cells have been the workhorse of the photovoltaic industry over the past decades. Recent major investments in new manufacturing facilities for monocrystalline and multicrystalline wafer-based cells, as well as for closely related silicon ribbon and sheet approaches, ensure this role will continue well into the future. Such investments suggest that the silicon wafer-based approach has successfully withstood the challenge mounted by thin-film chalcogenide-based cells, in the form of polycrystalline films of CdTe and CuInSe2, as well as that mounted by thin-film cells based on amorphous silicon and its alloys with germanium. The encumbent now faces a fresh challenge by a new wave of thin-film technologies developed in the 1990s, more closely related to the bulk approach and with some advantages over the earlier contenders. One new approach is based on a stack of two silicon thin-film cells, one cell using amorphous silicon and the other mixed-phase microcrystalline silicon. The second uses silicon thin-films in polycrystalline form deposited onto glass, even more directly capturing the strengths of the wafer-based approach. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.