Sweet Answer from Solar Mango: (updated Jul 2015)
When people are first told about thin-film solar, the immediate picture they form in their minds is a flexible strip of film that they can bend as they like.
However, not all thin film solar panels are of the “Bend It Like Beckham” type.
Many commercially used thin film solar modules, especially those used in large scale solar farms, are sandwiched between glass. These hence are rigid solar cells.
However, some thin film solar cells have more flexible substrates, such as polymers, and in these cases, the thin film solar cells are quite flexible.
There is also an emerging category of ultra-thin film solar panels that you can bend it as much as you can bend a thin sheet of plastic, but these currently have very low efficiency. Such fully flexible thin film solar panels are however widely expected to have significant potential in future, as their efficiency improves.
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