Flexible thin-film solar cells require flexible encapsulation to protect the copper-indium-2 selenide (CIS) absorber layer from humidity and aggressive environmental influences. Tantalum-silicon-based diffusion barriers are currently a favorite material to prevent future semiconductor devices from copper diffusion. In this work tantalum-silicon-nitrogen (Ta-Si-N) and tantalum-silicon-oxygen (Ta-Si-O) films were investigated and optimized for thin-film solar cell encapsulation of next-generation flexible solar modules. CIS solar modules were coated with tantalum-based barrier layers. The performance of the thin-film barrier encapsulation was determined by measuring the remaining module efficiency after a 1000 h accelerated aging test. A significantly enhanced stability against humidity diffusion in comparison to non-encapsulated modules was reached with a reactively sputtered thin-film system consisting of 250 nm Ta-Si-O and 15 nm Ta-Si-N. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.