Abstract :
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 chalcogenidebased
cells, in the form of polycrystalline films of CdTe and CuInSe , as well as that mounted by thin-film cells based on 2
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.
2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
