The conclusions section of the subject article is also interesting. FWIW, here is what the authors said:
Conclusions
As the production volume of PV modules continues to increase, a stage will soon be reached at which the availability of raw materials, production aspects,
ecological considerations, and operational reliability (rather than laboratory performance) become the prime issues in selecting and promoting a given technology. It is safe to assume that thin-film solar cells will play an increasing role in the future PV market. On the other hand, any newcomer to the production scene will, for obvious reasons, have a very hard time in displacing well-established materials and technologies, such as crystalline and amorphous silicon. One should not forget that, in the cases of crystalline and amorphous silicon, PV technology profits from the wide experience base of the microelectronics and the display industries, respectively: However, no such synergy is present for CIS and CdTe. One should also look at the production risks and at the ecological balance sheet of these technologies. The case of silicon is very clear and well documented, whereas the PV community does not have access to the independent and in-depth studies of specialized ecotoxological institutions for CIS and CdTe. Finally, because of the development of effective low-cost techniques for light trapping, it is no longer absolutely necessary to use a direct-bandgap semiconductor to obtain sufficient optical absorption in a thin-film PV solar cell. This again supports the case for silicon as the future prime PV material.
PV technologies cater to a very wide range of different requirements. One can therefore expect, especially with future growth in production and market volume, that at least two or three different PV technologies will coexist, each of them dedicated to a different sector of applications. |
