NOVELTY - A thin film photovoltaic device comprises relief textured transparent cover plate (7), layer of transparent conductive oxide having a layer thickness of less than 700 nm, a light absorbing active layer (2) and reflective back electrode (3), where the layer of transparent conductive oxide is non-textured layer (6).    USE - As thin film photovoltaic device (claimed), used to convert light energy into electrical energy.    ADVANTAGE - The transparent conductive oxide (TCO) is textured to increase the path lengths of light and thus the absorption of light) into the absorber layer. The TCO is designed for a specific texture, high conductivity and low absorption. This is making the process costly and hard to control. The TCO is made by forming a 800-1200 nm thick non-textured TCO layer and etch it in a wet-chemical processes to form a textured 600-800 nm TCO of desired optical and electrical properties. The thin film photovoltaic device only requires a material of good conductivity and low absorption. Since the resulting texture after wet processing is depending on the size of the crystallites, which is a function of the film thickness, films can be grown much thinner saving deposition time and enabling deposition at substrate temperatures which are not as demanding as the ones that are currently used, for zinc oxide up to 400 degrees C. The requirements of a uniform texture over large substrate sizes (8.5 up to the glass industries standard) and the dependence of texture and substrate temperature are very hard to realize process wise. Resulting non-uniformities in the texture would lead to a non-uniform external quantum efficiency (EQE) of the cells formed on such a TCO substrate with the cell of the lowest resulting short circuit current limiting the large area device.    DESCRIPTION OF DRAWING(S) - The figure shows a schematic view of thin film photovoltaic device.    Light absorbing active layer (2)    Reflective back electrode (3)    Protective back layer (4)    Non-textured layer (6)    Textured transparent cover plate (7)