DOE/OER-sponsored basic research in high-efficiency photovoltaics

A high-efficiency photovoltaic project involving many of the national laboratories and several universities has been initiated under the umbrella of the US Department of Energy (DOE) Center of Excellence for the Synthesis and Processing of Advanced Materials. The objectives of this project are to generate advances in fundamental scientific understanding that will impact the efficiency, cost, and reliability of thin-film photovoltaic cells. The project is focused on two areas: (1) silicon-based thin films, in which key scientific and technological problems involving amorphous and polycrystalline silicon thin films will be addressed, and (2) next-generation thin-film photovoltaics, which will be concerned with the possibilities of new advances and breakthroughs in the materials and physics of photovoltaics using nonsilicon-based materials