No longer expected to dominate the solar industry anytime soon, the thin-film photovoltaic industry is due to lose some steam in coming months and years, researchers say.

Though the market for thin-film PV is still growing, it’s not meeting previous expectations or expanding enough to support many of the 160 thin-film companies that have formed, according to the analysts.

The latest sign is the shutdown of Solasta Inc., a thin-film startup founded by three Boston College professors, earlier this year. But researchers say many more closures should be expected, since thin-film technology has proved challenging to commercialize and silicon prices have dropped.

In the solar industry, thin-film technology is applied to uses ranging from panels to flexible products such as portable solar chargers.

Thin film uses little or no silicon and is an alternative to the more prevalent crystalline PV, which relies heavily on silicon. The silicon shortage and price spike between 2006 and 2008 had given thin film its largest boost.

There are currently about 100 thin-film companies in commercial production and another 60 thin-film startups, said Shyam Mehta, senior solar analyst at GTM Research.

“Most of these companies will die,” predicts Mehta, who said his research suggests that about 25 of the companies will remain in their current form within five or six years.

“The expectations have proven to be unrealistic,” he said. “The venture capitalists are coming around to realize they have to kill off the strugglers.”

Solasta, founded in 2006, had received a Series A round from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, but was forced to sell its IP and assets after a “reassessment” of the thin-film solar market by its investors, Solasta co-founder and CTO Michael Naughton said in a statement.

Other thin-film companies in the region include Konarka Technologies Inc., which has commercialized “power plastic” products, and Magnolia Solar Corp., a startup working to develop nanostructured thin-film cells.

Thin-film companies received $2.4 billion in venture funding between 2007 and 2009, according to Mehta. Much of the excitement revolved around the success of First Solar Inc., a thin-film manufacturer that has dramatically cut the costs of PV modules and become the world’s largest PV supplier. The company staged a $400 million initial public offering in 2006.

Yet no other company has come close to matching that success, and the exuberance has died down. “We’re definitely going to see a shakeout,” said Ron Pernick, managing director of research firm Clean Edge Inc. “Not everyone’s going to make it.”

Still, he said, “I don’t think that the future for thin-film is gone by any means.”

Thin-film will likely grow from its current 23 percent market share to between 28 percent and 30 percent of the market in five years, Mehta said.

“Is it possible thin-film will be a huge disrupter and eventually overtake crystalline silicon? Yes,” he said. “Will that happen anytime soon? No.”

Konarka has shown signs of continued strength despite the lowered expectations about thin film, pulling in $23.8 million in a Series G funding round in January and $20 million in a collaboration deal with a Japanese company in March. Konarka has been shipping “organic” solar products, such as a solar bag and solar umbrella, since last fall.

Konarka has the only organic thin-film products on the market and so is not affected the same way as other companies in the industry, a Konarka spokesperson said in an email.

Magnolia Solar also is not vulnerable to issues facing many thin-film companies because the company is not seeking or accepting venture capital, said founder and CEO Ashok Sood.

Taking a different route, Sood engineered a reverse merger in January to make Magnolia a public company, traded on the over-the-counter market. The company closed on a $2.6 million private placement at the time and has since won development funding from the U.S. Air Force.

The closure of Solasta, Sood said, is a case in point for avoiding VCs. “They tend to go hot and cold,” he said.

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Kyle Alspach writes for the Boston Business Journal