As I studied CIGS systems, I began to realize that it had big advantages for manufacturing. Silicon solar cells are essentially printed-circuit boards. You build the solar cells on silicon wafers and then solder and wire them together in panels. As a thin-film technology, CIGS can use the type of lithography and deposition processes used in integrated circuits.

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All the other thin-film approaches have inherent instabilities, but CIS, like silicon, has no inherent degradation mechanism that has been identified.

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