This includes some innovative thin-film technologies, such as perovskite, dye-sensitized, quantum dot, organic, and CZTS thin-film solar cells. Thin-film cells have several advantages over first-generation silicon solar cells, including being lighter and more flexible due to their thin construction.
Finally crystalline silicon and thin-film PV solar cells technologies were compared together from the perspective of “total factors”, “technical factors”, “economic factors” and “payback period factor”.
5.1. General principles In thin-film silicon solar cells, one so far almost exclusively uses two-terminal tandem solar cells. These devices stack two subcells, one on top of the other as indicated in Fig. 25.
Sketch (not drawn to scale) showing basic structure of a single-junction thin-film silicon solar cell in the “superstrate configuration.” The thickness of the glass–TCO combination is basically determined by the glass thickness, ranging from 0.5 to 4 mm, whereas the TCO layer thickness is typically around 1 µm.
For all types of p–i–n- and n–i–p-type thin-film silicon solar cells, it is of paramount importance to have a strong internal electric field and to avoid substantial reduction of this field by any of the effects listed earlier.
Conclusions Thin-film silicon solar cells and modules have at present a significant disadvantage with respect to wafer-based crystalline silicon modules and even with respect to some other thin-film modules such as CIGS modules: their conversion efficiency is quite a bit lower.