The ink will work on silicon solar panels as well as those using alternative materials such as cadmium telluride (used by First Solar in the U.S.) or copper indium gallium selenide (used by Solar Frontier in Japan).
Nanosolar is one of several Silicon Valley startups that have attracted billions of dollars in venture capital to develop a thin-film technology called copper indium gallium selenide, or CIGS. Such solar cells use little expensive silicon, the main ingredient of conventional photovoltaic cells.
The three main types of thin film technologies use cadmium-telluride, copper-indium-gallium-selenide and amorphous-silicon to convert sunlight into electricity.
IBM's approach is based on a process developed by IBM Research to crank out so-called thin-film solar cells based on copper, indium, gallium and selenide.