This allows light to be absorbed more directly without the relatively thick additional layer required in other types of thin-film solar cells.

At another plant, in Newtown, Pa., the company is pursuing another strategy: thin-film cells.

One of the latest thin-film cells, said to have reached efficiencies up to 14 percent, does not degrade in long use.

The process uses a temporary substrate on which flexible thin-film solar cells are deposited.

This is lower than both types of silicon-based cell, but the thin-film cell is much cheaper to make.

Although less efficient, thin-film cells and organic polymer based cells can be produced quickly and cheaply.

Solar array mass could be reduced with thin-film photovoltaic cells, flexible blanket substrates, and composite support structures.

The second-generation PV technology is thin-film cells.

The power station will use thin-film solar cells.

The quantum efficiency of thin-film solar cells is also lower due to reduced number of collected charge carriers per incident photon.