Press Release

Joint research on roll-to-roll organic photovoltaics

ECN, the largest research centre in The Netherlands in the field of energy, and Holst Centre, an open-innovation initiative by TNO (The Netherlands) and IMEC (Belgium), signed an agreement to offer a joint research program on Roll-to-Roll organic photovoltaics (OPV) to the industry. The aim of the program is to transfer lab-scale processes to low-cost, large-area processes compatible with Roll-to-Roll production.

Although intrinsically less efficient than Silicon, organic materials have entered the photovoltaics world because of their low-cost fabrication potential and possibility to manufacture flexible solar cells for emerging applications (smart textiles...). At ECN, organic photovoltaics are being researched for almost a decade. The knowledge of materials, system designs and production processes has come to a point where transition to large scale manufacturing has to be envisaged.

At Holst Centre, the recently opened Roll-to-Roll research line for printed electronics will be used to complement the knowledge of ECN and support the further research towards low-cost, large-area manufacturing. To guarantee the low-cost potential, the upscaling will initially be done with active materials that are abundantly available, although an eye will be kept on new high-performance materials. In a first phase the investigated processes will be slot-die coating and gravure printing. Within the ECN labs, efficiencies of over 4% have been obtained. Aim is to at least sustain this level of efficiency when going towards roll-to-roll production.

Being research centres, ECN and Holst Centre will not take any of the technology in production themselves. The open-innovation program aims at industrial parties to subscribe and assign resident researchers to join the research teams on site. A free non-exclusive license on the generated IP is given to all partners participating in the program. The OPV program aims to gather the entire value chain of materials suppliers (foil manufacturers, ink suppliers) equipment manufacturers and device integrators.