Innovation highway: Breakthrough milestones and key developments in chalcopyrite photovoltaics from a retrospective viewpoint

Publication date: Available online 12 January 2017
Source:Thin Solid Films
Author(s): Daniel Abou-Ras, Sigurd Wagner, Bill J. Stanbery, Hans-Werner Schock, Roland Scheer, Lars Stolt, Susanne Siebentritt, Daniel Lincot, Chris Eberspacher, Katsumi Kushiya, Ayodhya N. Tiwari
The present contribution is a summary of an event that was organized as a special evening session in Symposium V “Chalcogenide Thin-Film Solar Cells” at the E-MRS 2016 Spring Meeting, Lille, France. The presentations in this session were given by the coauthors of this paper. These authors present retrospectives of key developments in the field of Cu(In,Ga)(S,Se)2 solar cells as they themselves had witnessed in their laboratories or companies. Also, anecdotes are brought up, which captured interesting circumstances in that evolutionary phase of the field. Because the focus was on historical perspectives rather than a comprehensive review of the field, recent developments intentionally were not addressed.