And while amorphous silicon can be turned into crystalline silicon by heating it, the high temperature required causes plastic to melt.

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Ovshinsky and his scientists had found a way to use thin films of amorphous silicon to turn the sun's energy into electrical power.

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In addition, the balls can be made quickly and simply by dropping spheres of amorphous silicon through hot gas, causing them to melt.

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This uses amorphous silicon, a noncrystalline form of silicon.

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His first splash came in 1968, when he announced that he had succeeded in making a switch out of amorphous silicon that relied on a principle he called Ovonics--named, of course, after himself.

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The company has licensed several patents from America's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where a team led by Paul Carey devised a clever way to turn amorphous silicon into the crystalline kind without high temperatures.

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Among the technologies are new ways of making already-commercialized formulations, like amorphous silicon and cadmium telluride, and newer formulations like CIGS, named for the elements it is made out of, copper, indium, gallium and selenium, and CIS, which leaves out the gallium.

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To start with, it is developing a roll-to-roll process to make amorphous-silicon transistors on plastic film.

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The three main types of thin film technologies use cadmium-telluride, copper-indium-gallium-selenide and amorphous-silicon to convert sunlight into electricity.

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The problem, however, is that the silicon layer is amorphous, rather than crystalline.

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