On Jun 23, 11:49 pm, (Henry Spencer) wrote:
In article . com,

kert wrote:
Does anyone know if any thin-film cells have been ever used or tested
in space environment yet ?

There have been some tests, although I don't believe I've seen results
(not that I've really gone looking). There's been no operational use that
I know of, yet.

People have long been interested in them for space applications, because
although their efficiency is lower than crystalline cells, they (and their
supporting substrate) can be made much thinner and lighter, which promises
more power per kilogram. Hence the interest in testing them.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

just to reply to my own question, some googling turned up a bit of
data. MISSE-5/FTSCE indeed flew two different types of thin-film
cells, these papers outline it
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=walters+ftsce
The samples tested were by Iowa Thin Film, Spectrolab and Emcore.

Apparently, the results were quite positive and both SpectroLab and
Emcore are touting their products as the future for spacecraft. What
remains to be done is testing actual array ( thes FTSCE experiments
were just cell level & material degradation tests ), its deployment
and powering the entire spacecraft.

-kert