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Cadmium telluride solar cells are the world’s leading thin-film photovoltaic technology. As of 2023, global installed capacity has surpassed 30 GWp, with about 40% of that capacity located in the United States. Their architecture can be simplified into several stacked layers, from bottom to top:
The incorporation of zinc or magnesium to form cadmium zine telluride (CdZnTe) and cadmium magnesium telluride (CdMgTe) represents a possible way to move the bandgap into a viable regime for tandem incorporation, but using these materials introduces processing challenges that have thus far prevented their use in high-throughput manufacturing.
The solar cells achieved an efficiency of 11 %. However, polyimide (PI) is less thermally stable compared to glass and may exhibit thermal expansion, which can cause delamination and degradation of the device. PI is also more susceptible to moisture and oxygen, which can degrade the effectiveness of the flexible CdTe solar cells . Fig. 4.
