Printing electricity from sun and heat - the new photovoltaics

Little wonder, then, that the world’s largest conference on printed electronics had many presentations on photovoltaics and many more on appropriate production machinery. At Printed Electronics Europe staged by analysts IDTechEx in Dresden April 8-9, Nanosolar described building factories to print Copper Indium Gallium diSelenide photovoltaics reel to reel in Germany and the USA this year and it promised “unprecedented cost efficiency and scaleability” and “near 100 percent materials utilisation” using nanoparticle dispersions deposited at high speed on low cost metal foil. The work of G24 Innovations already printing Dye Sensitised Solar Cells DSSC in the UK by an ink jet like process was mentioned and Optomec described its acoustically constrained aerosol spraying process for photovoltaics that can even pattern on edges. Heliatek presented its ambitious new organic PV venture supported by giants BASF and Robert Bosch, which will bring reel to reel vacuum deposition of organic PV to the market with high performance organics containing C60 buckyballs in pin tandem cells, the trial modules being an appropriate green in color as shown below.