Tellurium
Photovoltaics
Alloys
resr
Buy Tellurium
Raw material producers:
China, Japan, Russia
Areas of application:
Thin-film solar cells (as cadmium telluride CdTe)
Thermoelectric applications (as bismuth telluride BiTe)
Alloy additive
Vulcanising agent (rubber processing, sensors, pigments)
Market forecasts:
- Cadmium telluride (CdTe) is the leading thin-film solar technology. CdTe accounts for almost 4 % of the global market share for a variety of thin-film materials. In the USA, this share is as high as 21 %. Forecasts predict an increase in US demand for CdTe as CdTe production is expected to expand to 14 gigawatts by 2027.1
- According to estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA), photovoltaics will become the most important source of renewable energy worldwide by 2029. Demand for thin-film modules and therefore for tellurium should also benefit from this, as photovoltaics is the most important field of application in terms of share.2
- Photovoltaics is a rapidly growing market: the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of cumulative PV installations between 2014 and 2024 was around 27 %. Thin-film PV currently accounts for 2-3 % of the PV market. However, the efficiency of CdTe modules has more than doubled in the last 15 years, and global deployment of the technology has grown from the megawatt to the gigawatt scale. The US Department of Energy sees even greater potential for further increases in efficiency, particularly for commercial and large-scale systems.3
1) sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927024825004994
2) iea.org/energy-system/renewables/solar-pv
3.1) ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/photovoltaics-report.html
3.2) energy.gov/eere/solar/cadmium-telluride