Joined forces on organic photovoltaics

Petten/Eindhoven - ECN 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.

Organic solar cell resulting from ECN’s research efforts and ready for transfer to low-cost large-area processes.

About Holst Centre
Holst Centre is an independent open-innovation R&D centre that develops generic technologies for Wireless Autonomous Transducer Solutions and for Systems-in-Foil. A key feature of Holst Centre is its partnership model with industry and academia around shared roadmaps and programs. It is this kind of cross-fertilization that enables Holst Centre to tune its scientific strategy to industrial needs.

Holst Centre was set up in 2005 by IMEC (Flanders, Belgium) and TNO (The Netherlands) with support from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Government of Flanders. It is named after Gilles Holst, a Dutch pioneer in Research and Development and first director of Philips Research.

Located on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Holst Centre benefits from the state-of-the-art on-site facilities. Holst Centre has over 100 employees (growing to over 200 by 2010) and a commitment from over 15 leading industrial partners.
More information: www.holstcentre.com

Contact
Holst Centre
Marcel Tijdink
Program Manager Large-Area Printing
E-mail: Marcel.Tijdink@remove-this-part-tno.nl
T: +31 (0)40 277 40 38
Or T: +31 (0)40 277 40 00

ECN
Paul Pex
Manager thin-film pv
E-mail: pex@remove-this-part-ecn.nl
T: +31 (0)224 56 4640

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