Solliance and imec join forces in thin film PV R&D
Solliance also concentrates on generic technologies that will be vital to any thin film PV industry: testing, characterization and monitoring, laser technologies, light management by mechanical texturization, transparent conductive layers, monolithic interconnection, new OPV device development, thin film deposition techniques, sheet-to-sheet processing, roll-to-roll (R2R) processing, and in-line monitoring.
Solliance’s ambition is to strengthen the position of the Eindhoven-Leuven-Aachen triangle (ELAT region) as a world player in thin film PV. It creates synergy among more than 250 researchers by the joint use of state-of-the-art infrastructure, the alignment of research programs, and close cooperation with the solar business community.
Imec is also about to present, with Plextronics and Solvay, an organic polymer-based single junction solar cell with 6.9% performance in an innovative inverted device stack. Combining imec’s scalable inverted device architecture and Plextronics’ polymers, a module level efficiency of 5% was achieved for an aperture area of 25cm².
The dedicated inverted bulk heterojunction architecture developed by imec improved the device performance by at least 0.5% over standard architectures used for organic solar cells. In the active layer, a new buffer layer was introduced to optimize the light management in the device. Imec’s innovative device architecture, combined with Plextronics’ low band-gap p-type polymer with a fullerene derivate, resulted in a stabilized certified conversion efficiency of 6.9%, which is the highest performance obtained for this polymer material, claims the research centre.
Tom Aernouts, R&D Team Leader Organic Photovoltaics at imec: “We are delighted to present these excellent results, achieved by combining imec’s expertise and knowhow in organic photovoltaics R&D with Plextronics’ innovative material. With further optimizations to the material as well as to the architecture, for example by introducing a multi-junction featuring different layers of different polymers each capturing another part of the light spectrum, we envision organic solar cell lifetimes of over 10 years and conversion efficiencies of 10% in two to three years, ultimately aiming at industry-relevant solutions.”
These results and solutions will be presented at the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition (PVSEC) in Hamburg.
Visit Solliance at www.solliance.eu
Solliance partners include:
The Energy Center of the Netherlands – www.ecn.nl
Imec – www.imec.be
The TNO companies – www.tno.nl
The Holst Centre – www.holstcentre.com
The TU/e, Eindhoven University of Technology – www.tue.nl
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