Copyright © 2007 S. W. Glunz. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The current cost distribution of a crystalline silicon PV module is clearly dominated by material costs, especially by the costs of the silicon wafer. Therefore cell designs that allow the use of thinner wafers and the increase of energy conversion efficiency are of special interest to the PV industry. This article gives an overview of the most critical issues to achieve this aim and of the recent activities at Fraunhofer ISE and other institutes.