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Cryst,alline silicon based solar cell t,echnology is stmill dominant with over 85 market share in t8he current state of photovoltaic industry but the nia,terial issues as-sociated wit,h silicon wafers and t,he product'ion costs are st'ill major obstacles for t'histechnology. Although it is a well established technology, the increasing demand forcrystalline silicon from semiconductor industry a,nd the loss of corisiderable amountof material during wafer fabrication have prevent,ed t2he cheap and easily availablesubst,rates for PV industry. Thin-film solar cell technology, as an alternative toc-Si based solar cells; is based on the deposition of device materials onto foreignsubstrates thus reducing the production cost,s by using less and cheaper materialsduring device fabrication. Today; amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), cadmiurn telluride(CdTe), and chalcopyrites ( C ~ ( I n , G a ) ( s , s e ) ~ ) based thin-film solar cells are coni-mercially available. However, these makrials suffer from light-induced degradation,toxicity arid scarcity of some material components. Polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) as a thin-film material has major adx~ant~ages compared to non-silicon thin-filmtechnologies. In theory, poly-Si may retain the performance and stability of c-Si,a gain on efficiency; and tAin-film Si may take advant,age of established manufac-turing techniques, a gain on cost. It is also widely available. cheap and non-toxic.....-...,..tested for theQ1 PC1 bus cardBoth these projects mere sofixare des elopment efforts tonards contributing to dlfferentaspects of Roboucs and lZ1echatronics projects m the Controls and Roboucs Group..
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