Materials for Thin-Film Photovoltaics To Reach $3.8 Billion by 2015

• New materials the key to PV—In the near future, thin-film materials will provide entirely new directions for PV. Silicon inks will soon be available that will combine the manufacturability advantages of organic PV, but with much higher conversion efficiencies. Slivers of crystalline silicon have been developed that combine the high efficiency of crystalline silicon with the flexibility and ease of fabrication of thin film; and this technology is already being used in a pilot plant. Further off lies the commercialization of inorganic nanocrystals designed to overcome the one electron per solar photon limitation in solar energy conversion. CdSe, CdS and CdTe nanocrystals have all been employed in this way in the lab and hint at a thin-film PV of the future with energy conversion ratios well into the double digits.