Hacker News Reader

They seem to be talking about the abundance of carbon in comparison to the indium used in silicon-based panels, rather than because silicon itself is scarce.

View on HN

Indium is only used for the clear ITO electrode, though. So if scarcity of Indium were the only concern, then only the "front" carbon electrode would be relevant--the rest of the photovoltaic structure could be anything you wanted (including Si).

Yes, that is a creeping problem. Indium is definitely getting strained, and the sputtering process used to deposit ITO can be as low as like 3% deposition efficiency.

I just had a proposal rejected by dept of energy for a composite metal/ceramic ITO replacement :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com