1. Photovoltaic solar energy conversion -- 2. Status report on solar energy technologies -- 3. Electrochemical deposition of solar energy materials -- 4. Background of the CdTe solar cell and the new device concept -- 5. Extension of the new model to CIGS thin-film solar cells -- 6. Effective harvesting of photons -- 7. Multi-layer graded bandgap solar cells -- 8. Solar cells active in complete darkness -- 9. Effects of defects on photovoltaic solar cell characteristics -- 10. A future dominated by solar energy -- 11. Is fermi-level pinning affecting GaAs-based solar cells? -- 12. Thoughts on future directions of thin-film solar cell research and development.