Date: 16/12/2011

Imec achieved 8.3% effeciecy for organic polymer based solar PV cells

Imec along with its partners Polyera and international chemical group Solvay said to have achieved a new world-record efficiency of 8.3% for polymer-based single junction organic solar cells in an inverted device stack. Researchers world over are trying to replace silicon with low cost plastic as semiconductor material to build the photo-diode, a basic device in solar PV. The advantage of using plastic or any such polymer is cost and also ease of manufacturing. But the problem is achieving effeciency. 8.3% effeciency is good but a still a long for the shift. Another two advantages of organic semiconductor material are it can take any shape due to flexibility and light weight.

Imec says due to optical translucency, gives organic solar cells the potential to be cheaply integrated into everything from clothing to building facades and windows.

Imec describes it has developed a proprietary inverted bulk heterojunction architecture for polymer-based solar cells that simultaneously optimizes cell light management and increases 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%. This is the highest certified efficiency reported to date in the world for inverted polymer cell architectures, claims imec. This result follows previous reports on imec's proprietary device architecture, proving that scalable inverted device architectures are applicable to a variety of polymer materials. Although further improvements of efficiency and lifetime are required to bring this potentially-revolutionary technology to market, inverted device architectures offer a number of commercially-relevant benefits over standard architectures. As such, this milestone represents another advancement towards commercially-viable organic solar panels, explains imec.

Tom Aernouts, R&D Team Leader Organic Photovoltaics at imec: "These excellent results are the fruit of an intense collaboration between Solvay, imec and Polyera. It is remarkable to see how the inverted architecture adds to the performance of these cells! This shows how crucial the combination of high-level device technology and next-generation materials will be to bring organic solar cells to the market."

Patrick Francoisse, Sustainable Energy Platform Manager, Innovation Center, Solvay: "Solvay is convinced organic photovoltaic devices will play an essential role in the future, as they will not only be easier and cheaper to produce, but will also enable new applications. These milestone results demonstrate how collaboration between a world-class chemical company, an innovative materials developer like Polyera, and a highly-regarded research and development center like imec can produce breakthrough results that bring the first day of mass production closer. Next to increasing efficiency, our efforts will now also turn to increasing size, and lifetime of the cells."

Antonio Facchetti, CTO of Polyera: "This is great work done by the teams at imec, Solvay, and here at Polyera. We've now demonstrated that with a combination of accurate control over semiconductor polymer chemistry and innovative cell architectures, new efficiency milestones can be achieved". Martin Drees, OPV Device Team Manager at Polyera: "We're excited by the great technical progress we've seen over the past few months, and expect to see the rate of achievement continue to accelerate during the coming year."