Joined forces on organic photovoltaics

Tag : pve film
Petten/Eindhoven - ECN and Holst Centre, an open-innovationinitiative by TNO (The Netherlands) and IMEC (Belgium), signed anagreement to offer a joint research program on Roll-to-Roll organicphotovoltaics (OPV) to the industry. The aim of the program is totransfer lab-scale processes to low-cost, large-area processescompatible with Roll-to-Roll production.
Although intrinsically less efficient than Silicon, organicmaterials have entered the photovoltaics world because of theirlow-cost fabrication potential and possibility to manufactureflexible solar cells for emerging applications (smart textiles&).At ECN, organic photovoltaics are being researched for almost adecade. The knowledge of materials, system designs and productionprocesses has come to a point where transition to large scalemanufacturing has to be envisaged.
At Holst Centre, the recently opened Roll-to-Roll research line forprinted electronics will be used to complement the knowledge of ECNand support the further research towards low-cost, large-areamanufacturing. To guarantee the low-cost potential, the upscalingwill initially be done with active materials that are abundantlyavailable, although an eye will be kept on new high-performancematerials. In a first phase the investigated processes will beslot-die coating and gravure printing. Within the ECN labs,efficiencies of over 4% have been obtained. Aim is to at leastsustain this level of efficiency when going towards roll-to-rollproduction.
Being research centres, ECN and Holst Centre will not take any ofthe technology in production themselves. The open-innovationprogram aims at industrial parties to subscribe and assign residentresearchers to join the research teams on site. A freenon-exclusive license on the generated IP is given to all partnersparticipating in the program. The OPV program aims to gather theentire value chain of materials suppliers (foil manufacturers, inksuppliers&) equipment manufacturers and device integrators.

Organic solar cell resulting from ECNs research efforts and readyfor transfer to low-cost large-area processes.
About Holst Centre
Holst Centre is an independent open-innovation R&D centre thatdevelops generic technologies for Wireless Autonomous TransducerSolutions and for Systems-in-Foil. A key feature of Holst Centre isits partnership model with industry and academia around sharedroadmaps and programs. It is this kind of cross-fertilization thatenables Holst Centre to tune its scientific strategy to industrialneeds.
Holst Centre was set up in 2005 by IMEC (Flanders, Belgium) and TNO(The Netherlands) with support from the Dutch Ministry of EconomicAffairs and the Government of Flanders. It is named after GillesHolst, a Dutch pioneer in Research and Development and firstdirector of Philips Research.
Located on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Holst Centre benefitsfrom the state-of-the-art on-site facilities. Holst Centre has over100 employees (growing to over 200 by 2010) and a commitment fromover 15 leading industrial partners.