Future photovoltaic cell technology

One way to achieve further cost reductions in photovoltaic cells is to use considerably less semiconductor material per cell. There are limits to how much reduction can be made to the amount of crystalline silicon in a conventional cell because it is not that strong an absorber of light.

There are other possible semiconductors that can be used in very thin layers (thin film photovoltaic cell technology). These do away with the conventional wafer approach to making photovoltaic cells and instead use deposited layers less than 1 micron (one thousandth of a millimetre) on a material such as glass, steel or plastic.

At present thin film photovoltaic cells do not have as high efficiency as crystalline silicon cells. The cost today per peak Watt is about the same. Their cost per square metre of photovoltaic module is about one third the cost of of crystalline silicon technology. If the efficiency of thin film photovoltaic cells can be raised to the same level as that of today's crystalline silicon cells, then the economics will be about right for large scale use as ac power producers.

At present, most of the larger size photovoltaic systems are based on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cell technology, and this will continue to be so for some years.