How the Next Big Solar Panel Tech is Already Here. Order yourself a LARQ Bottle PureVis 2 to go plastic free and enjoy ice cold water throughout the entire day. https://bylarq.com/undecidedpv2 Solar panels are typically made with silicon as their semiconducting material. Cadmium telluride based photovoltaics (or CdTe for short) are the second-most common kind of panels after silicon PV, but when silicon still makes up the vast majority of the market, that doesn’t mean as much. So what on earth are cadmium telluride solar panels? And if they’re already in use today, why are they the solar panel industry’s best-kept secret?