Plextronics Makes Breakthroughs for the Organic Photovoltaics Market

On June 1, the Ink Business Development’s Director of Plextronics, Inc. Mary Boone spoke on the applications of energy harvesting for organic photovoltaics (OPV) at the Large-Area, Organic & Printed Electronics Convention (LOPE-C) located in Frankfurt, Germany. Mary spoke on the growing market opportunity that energy harvesting presents to printed solar cells. She also stressed on the advantages of the company’s Plexcore PV 2000 ink set in comparison with other products.

The Plexcore PV 2000 ink set offers higher performance throughout a wide range of fluorescent lighting effects in comparison with amorphous silicon solar cells; lower cost in comparison with other power resources; and comprises non-toxic, safe materials and not like the heavy metals contained in most batteries. Moreover, in comparison with traditional organic solar technology, the Plexcore PV 2000 ink set offers an indoor power density increase of 30-40%.

Plextronics has also created a novel manufacturing method that facilitates processing of OPV even at low temperatures. Even as earlier industry standard methods required annealing of glass substrates at around 110°C, this new method of Plextronics facilitates annealing at below 65°C. This method is likely to decrease production costs by facilitating the usage of cost-effective substrates.