8. Conclusions, Challenges Encountered and Future Work

The sun offers mankind virtually unlimited energy potential with photovoltaics being one of the energy-harnessing technologies. New understanding of semiconductor material issues, processing steps, graded bandgap device architectures and device physics paves the way to achieving high-energy conversion efficiency. Although the photovoltaic market is dominated by Si-based solar cells, CdTe-based solar cells provide competitiveness based on its economic viability and conversion efficiency. The use of electroplating as the semiconductor deposition technique further strengthens the exploration of science behind these devices and economic competitiveness of CdTe-based solar cells as demonstrated in this book. Graded bandgap solar cells provide a promising path to produce low-cost and high-efficiency, next-generation solar cell development.