Large-area, light-weight, flexible solar cell production technology: ready for market entry

We have been developing roll-to-roll production technologies of amorphous-silicon solar cell on plastic-film substrates. In this paper, newly developed deposition methods of (1) excitation-frequency controlled plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition of amorphous silicon, (2) selective reactive sputtering of metal electrode with low substrate temperature and (3) deposition of large-area uniform transparent conductive oxide are described. The solar cells were applied to 4 m-long light-weight and large-area building-integrated modules.