A Cradle-to-Deposition Life Cycle Assessment of Emerging Photovoltaic Materials

With the photovoltaic industry receiving a lot of attention due to its potential benefit to alleviate the dependence of fossil fuels. This work analyses the environmental impact of emerging methods for the deposition of leading photovoltaic materials used in thin film technologies. The impact results are gained from adopting a standardised life cycle assessment (LCA) of which the photovoltaic materials are analysed from their extraction ‘cradle’ to the point at which they are deposed. This work focuses on the impact categories such as resource depletion, eco-toxicity and global warming due to literature review highlights that these are the key areas of concern in LCA of photovoltaic materials. The outcome of this analysis allows a clear recommendation to be established as one of the photovoltaic thin films produces a result with significantly lower impact scores in all of the impact categories.