Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Organic solar cell with inverted architecture achieves 8.3 percent efficiency


Imec, Polyera and Solvay announce that they have achieved a world record efficiency of 8.3 percent on their organic solar cells, which use inverted architecture.
The group has recorded the efficiency on its polymer-based single junction organic solar cells in an inverted device stack. "These excellent performance results represent a crucial step towards successful commercialization of organic photovoltaic cells," said Imec in a statement released.
The company has designed a proprietary inverted bulk heterojunction architecture for polymer-based solar cells, which is said to simultaneously optimize cell light management and increase device stability. "With this architecture, and a proprietary Polyera semiconductor in the photoactive layer, a team of imec and Solvay researchers now announces a certified conversion efficiency of 8.3 percent," continued the statement.
Before the technology can be commercialized, however, Imec does admit that further efficiency gains and lifetime improvements need to be recorded.
Overall, the company believes that organic cells will help to boost the cost competitiveness of solar, due to their potential to be manufactured on large-areas at high-throughput. Furthermore, their flexibility in application - they can be manufactured on such lightweight and flexible substrates as plastic and textiles -  means transportation and installation costs can continue to be driven down.

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