Thin-film silicon and GaAs solar cells

The growth of thin films of crystalline silicon and GaAs on inexpensive substrates offers the promise of combining the high performance of single crystal solar cells with the low cost of thin-film solar cells. The large number of potential crystal growth processes for achieving the desired structure can be organized into melt growth, vapor phase growth, solid state growth and solution growth. Solution growth offers several advantages for the development of solar cell quality material on dissimilar substrates. Thin solar cell design, the selection criteria that led to the choice of solution growth, a description of the growth stages and the growth of silicon on glass and steel and GaAs on aluminum are described.