High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Cadmium telluride (CdTe) photovoltaics describes a photovoltaic (PV) technology that is based on the use of cadmium telluride thin film, a semiconductor layer designed to absorb and convert sunlight into electricity.Cadmium telluride PV is the first and only thin film photovoltaic technology to surpass crystalline silicon PV in cheapness for a significant portion of the PV market, namely in multi-kilowatt systems.