Future solar cells will be light and mechanically flexible. They will be produced at low costs with the help of printing processes. POPUP, the new BMBF-funded research project, aims at developing more efficient materials and new architectures for organic photovoltaic devices. An interdisciplinary team headed by Dr. Alexander Colsmann of the KIT Light Technology Institute (LTI) works on improving the basic understanding and developing new architectures for semitransparent and non-transparent solar cells and modules.
Depending on the application, solar cells are manufactured on flexible plastic foils or rigid glass carriers. In the area of organic photovoltaics, KIT scientists work on two objectives, namely, full printability of solar cells and replacing indium tin oxide (ITO) as the electrode material. Instead, the scientists use conductive and transparent foils for flexible carriers. For glass carriers, they study the deposition of transparent electrodes from metallic microstructures and conductive buffer layers. In addition, the KIT team studies highly efficient semi-transparent solar cells in mini-modules made of organic semiconductors. Hence, KIT research concentrates on one of the key technologies of organic photovoltaics.
In the medium and long term, the industry partners plan to manufacture organic solar modules by competitive mass production methods. Later on, the solar modules are planned to be integrated into vehicles for electricity supply to onboard electronics, in buildings and glass facades, for energy supply of free-standing buildings and devices, emergency systems, transport and navigation aids. The novel technologies will also be used for off-grid electricity supply in the leisure activity sector or for charging mobile consumer devices. The results obtained by the KIT researchers will have direct impact on various applications.
The POPUP consortium comprises ten partners who have many years of experience in the organic photovoltaics field and are technology leaders in their respective areas of work: Merck, Darmstadt; Center for Applied Energy Systems, Erlangen; PolyIC GmbH & Co. KG, Fürth; Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe; Leonhard Kurz Stiftung & Co. KG, Fürth; Belectric OPV GmbH, Nuremberg; Webasto Group, Stockdorf; Siemens AG, Erlangen; Centrosolar Glas GmbH & Co. KG, Fürth; Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research, Stuttgart. The companies, universities and institutes are cooperating along a cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary value chain characterized by the division of labor.
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