Britannica Sources used in this answer

Why do amorphous silicon thin-film solar cells have lower efficiency than many other solar cells?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Diagram of a solar cell showing labeled layers, including a front electrical contact grid, antireflection layer, absorber layer, back junction layer, and back electrical contact layer, with arrows indicating light entering and terminals connecting to a circuit. — solar cell A commonly used solar cell structure. In many such cells, the absorber layer and the back junction layer are both made of the same material.

Amorphous silicon thin-film solar cells generally exhibit lower efficiency—typically less than 10 percent—compared to crystalline silicon and other photovoltaic technologies because of their noncrystalline structure.1

In pure amorphous silicon, the lack of a long-range ordered crystal lattice results in intrinsic electronic defects that hinder the efficient movement of charge carriers. While these cells are often manufactured as a silicon-hydrogen alloy to help mitigate these defects, the material's inherent properties still limit its performance relative to the highly ordered structure of single-crystal silicon.23

Furthermore, the efficiency of any solar cell is limited by factors such as the recombination of electrons and holes, which removes their contribution to the electric current. In amorphous materials, these recombination processes and other material-specific constraints prevent them from reaching the higher conversion efficiencies seen in rigid, crystalline-based photovoltaics. Despite this lower efficiency, amorphous silicon remains a popular choice for specific applications due to its abundance, nontoxicity, low manufacturing cost, and the ability to be deposited as large-area, flexible thin films.312