PARIS -- The Swiss Center for Electronics andMicrotechnology (CSEM SA) has launched a four-year, 14.2 million euro ($18.8million) project that aims to develop highly efficient, long-lasting, inexpensive,and environmentally friendly printed organic photovoltaics (OPV).
The project, dubbed SUstainable Novel FLexible Organic WattsEfficiently Reliable (Sunflower), gathers 17 partner institutions from scienceand industry, including Agfa, BASF, DuPont Teijin Films, Amcor FlexibleKreuzlingen, as well as the photovoltaic pioneer Konarka Technologies andEuropean research institutes and universities.
The Sunflower consortium said it expects to produce printedorganic PV panels with high efficiency architectures such as tandem cells anddedicated light management structures. The performance of the photo active andpassive barrier materials is expected to be much higher including processcontrolled morphology, partners said.
Project partners said they intend to deliver solutions forcost effective flexible substrates, diffusion barriers, and conductors. In thenear future, they said they expect to have a deeper knowledge of the devicephysics, an elucidation of degradation mechanisms and an estimate of theenvironmental impact of the main materials and processes.
The consortium noted that the requirements for the projectprototype include: High module efficiency to be competitive with other PVtechnologies; multilayer structure ("tandem") to achieve high efficiency; costeffective barriers and getters to achieve long lifetime; as well asroll-to-roll atmospheric printing processes to lower costs [where costs includefabrication (Eur) and environmental impact (kgCO2)].
Sunflower prototypeThis story as originally posted by EE Times.