Imec, a Leuven, Belgium headquartered nano-electronics research company, and its 16 project partners have declared the launch of X10D, the European FP7 project.
The project is aimed at formulating and introducing tandem organic solar cells with extended life cycle, increased level of solar conversion efficiency, and reduced level of manufacturing cost. The X10D project works with an objective to make the organic photovoltaic technologies on par and competitive with that of the thin-film solar PV market.
Imec’s tandem organic solar cells on glass plates with a power conversion efficiency to 5.15%. Credit: Imec
Organic solar cells promise to have the basic elements such as high level energy output and cheaper manufacturing costs needed for the successful launch of a new PV technology. But the presently available organic solar cell technologies do not perform well under closed conditions and suffer from drop in solar power conversion efficiency and do not match the efficiency of the dominant silicon PV technologies.
The X10D project employ a new type of production technologies, materials, design and architectures in trying to improve the power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells to 12% at the cell level and 9% at the module level. The project is aimed at improving the service life of the OPV modules that use glass to 20 years and foils to 10 years and bring down the cost of modules lesser than 0.70 €/Watt-peak.
The project collects the technology and expertise from solar companies in Europe, research institutes and well known universities. It also utilizes the services of an exclusive OPV research and development group dealing with both small molecule-based and solution-processed OPV technology. The project constitutes every section of the value chain such as life-cycle, energy, encapsulation engineering, laser scribing equipment and procedures, new transparent conductors, large-area deposition procedures and equipment, device development and up-grading, and material development and up-grading.