ABSTRACT
In recent years, a new generation of solar electric products has emerged from the lab into the global market. Much innovation centers around thin-film solar technologies that use approximately 1% of the active and expensive PV material to convert photons from the sun into electrons. ™rough a combination of cost advantages and new product applications, thin-film solar is serving as a paradigm shi® toward distributed electricity generation at cost parity with other forms of energy. Copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) has long been the most promising thin-film PV material, used for its high conversion efficiencies in advanced spacecra® applications, but has not had a reliable and rapid manufacturing process that could scale effectively and provide significant amounts of electricity at the point of use. ™e field-assisted simultaneous synthesis and transfer (FASST®) process is one such manufacturing process, enabling the rapid printing of microscale CIGS films with p-type and n-type nanodomains that are critical for achieving the highest efficiencies possible in this material system.
