DayStar Technologies, Inc. is a publicly-traded solar energy company located in Santa Clara

Santa Clara, California

Santa Clara , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. The city is the site of the eighth of 21 California missions, Mission Santa Clara de Asís, and was named after the mission. The Mission and Mission Gardens are located on the...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. Its primary product is a thin film

Thin film

A thin film is a layer of material ranging from fractions of a nanometer to several micrometers in thickness. Electronic semiconductor devices and optical coatings are the main applications benefiting from thin film construction....

 photovoltaic material on a glass or plastic substrate. These thin film solar modules are manufactured using copper indium gallium (di)selenide

Copper indium gallium selenide

Copper indium gallium selenide is a I-III-VI2 semiconductor material composed of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium. The material is a solid solution of copper indium selenide and copper gallium selenide...

 (CIGS), which has shown a 19.5% NREL efficiency in real world conditions, slightly above CdTe

Cadmium telluride

Cadmium telluride is a crystalline compound formed from cadmium and tellurium. It is used as an infrared optical window and a solar cell material. It is usually sandwiched with cadmium sulfide to form a p-n junction photovoltaic solar cell...

 and significantly above amorphous silicon

Amorphous silicon

Amorphous silicon is the non-crystalline allotropic form of silicon. It can be deposited in thin films at low temperatures onto a variety of substrates, offering some unique capabilities for a variety of electronics.-Description:...

.

External links

• Ascent Solar
• ITN Energy Systems
• Ascent Solar touts flexible CIGS-based PV laminate