Cadmium Telluride Photovoltaic Thin Film

Cadmium telluride photovoltaics, also known as cadmium telluride thin film or CdTe thin film, are a type of photovoltaic device. Photovoltaic (PV) devices produce direct current electricity upon exposure to light. They are a member of a class of technologies known as “thin film solar cells”—that is to say, devices that produce electricity from light from a “thin film” of chemical compounds, rather than a wafer of crystalline silicon.

Cadmium telluride is a compound that can be used in the manufacture of photovoltaic devices. They differ from “crystalline silicon” photovoltaic technologies in that they use a smaller amount of semiconductor—a thin film—to generate the electricity. This can be cheaper to produce; however, there is a trade-off in that the efficiency of thin film devices is less ...