Open access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. The authors declare no conflict of interest. Abstract Organic solar cells (OSC) nowadays match their inorganic competitors in terms of current production but lag behind with regards to their open-circuit voltage loss and fill-factor, with sta...
Science, this issue p. 1094 Although organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells have many advantages, their performance still lags far behind that of other photovoltaic platforms. A fundamental reason for their low performance is the low charge mobility of organic materials, leading to a limit on the active-layer thickness and efficient light absorption.
At present, a cell with an area of 79 cm 2 has already demonstrated a PCE of 26.7%, and a cell with an area of 180 cm 2 (which would be a truly amazing size for other PV technologies) reached a PCE of 26.6%. These cell results lead us to anticipate that the module efficiency will also increase in the near future.
Thin film solar cells are favorable because of their minimum material usage and rising efficiencies. The three major thin film solar cell technologies include amorphous silicon (α-Si), copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), and cadmium telluride (CdTe).
Cu (In,Ga) (S,Se) 2 (CIGS) solar cells show record efficiencies comparable to those of crystalline Si-based technologies. Their industrial module production costs are also comparable to those of Si photovoltaics in spite of their much lower production volume.
Due to the high balance of systems cost, the cost of electricity from α-Si solar cell will be much higher than the other two thin film technologies and even crystalline Si. This is the major reason the commercial activities of the α-Si technology are almost extinct.