SLIVER Technology:

SLIVER solar cells are a new type of solar cell with the potential to
revolutionise the global solar power industry. They were developed at
the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems with funding assistance from
Origin Energy. SLIVER technology uses a revolutionary process to
achieve high efficiencies while significantly reducing the amount of
expensive silicon in solar cells. Solar modules made from SLIVERs can
be lightweight, flexible and transparent and offer imaginative
opportunities for building integration and other applications. By
substantially improving the cost competitiveness of photovoltaics
compared to electricity derived from fossil fuels, slivers have the
potential to revolutionise the photovoltaics industry and
simultaneously address the critical environmental issue of global warming.

A solar panel using SLIVER Cell technology needs the equivalent of two
silicon wafers to convert sunlight to 140 watts of power. By
comparison, a conventional solar panel needs about 60 silicon wafers
to achieve this performance. By dramatically reducing the amount of
expensive pure silicon, the largest cost in solar panels today, this
new technology represents a major advance in solar power technology.

The above is an excerpt from:

http://solar.anu.edu.au/research/sliver.php