Solliance manufactures organic thin-film solar cells using inkjet printing

“Solliance”, a technology alliance of thin-film solar cells in Europe, announced on December 11th, 2013 that it has successfully produced a flexible organic thin-film solar cell (OPV) using the full inkjet printing process (in English).

The ability to freely design the shape of the battery cells is the biggest advantage of full inkjet printing, and it is also possible to create triangular cells and leaf-shaped cells. In addition, the process does not select the substrate, so it can also be manufactured by the roll-to-roll process, which helps to produce OPV modules at low cost.

This OPV utilizes ink jet technology to fabricate six layers of silver (Ag) electrodes, highly conductive PEDOT:PSS, ZnO, active layers, highly conductive PEDOT:PSS, and Ag electrodes stacked on a flexible substrate. The cell size produced was 1 cm x 2 cm. The module made using this unit is 5 inches square (about 12.8 cm square).

The Konica Minolta industrial ink jet print head "KM512" and Roth & Rau's ink jet print apparatus "LP50" were used in combination. According to reports, the maximum temperature of the manufacturing process is 120°C.

The "leaf-shaped solar cell" produced by this technology

Solliance first used the Spin Coat method to make OPVs when using full inkjet printing technology to make solar cells. Then developed the ink of each layer will not damage the ink material of the lower layer, thus produced this OPV.

Regarding conversion efficiency, Solliance stated that “it is not clear what the specific numbers are”, but said that more than 75% of the conversion efficiency is achieved when the OPV is manufactured by spin-coating.