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I recently became aware of another photovoltaic startup, one based in El Monte, not far from my digs in Los Angeles. Dina Lozofsky, who I met when she worked at UCLA with the California NanoSystems Institute, recently took the VP of IP development and strategic alliances position at Solarmer Energy. As she told me in a recent email, the PV newbie (with UCLA-developed basic tech) "is working to make flexible, translucent, efficient polymer solar cells a reality, and we have just achieved the first demonstration of our technology. As far as we know," she continued, "this is the first polymer solar cell charging of a mobile phone (see photo below). The panel was successfully tested out charging multiple brands of phones."



Solarmer's plastic PV demo charges things up.

She went on to tell me that they "are very excited about this demonstration," and "are looking to the future of the technology. Our goal is to demonstrate a commercial-grade version of the prototype by the end of the third quarter of 2009. That prototype should provide 8% efficiency with 3+ years lifetime. When we achieve this efficiency goal, the charger we just demonstrated will be reduced to about the size of a medium post-it note."

In a follow-up email, she said the active film layers on the devices were about 200 nm, and are solution processed, currently with spincoating, but later it will be done with a blading and printing approach. Although using a batch process at this stage, Solarmer plans to employ roll-to-roll manufacturing when they push toward pilot and volume production. She added that in terms of the timing of said pilot line and full production, "we are working on addressing those issues in the next six months." As for the first major app envisioned by Solarmer for its polymer PV, portable digital devices are the targeted niche.

Dina sent me a presentation delivered by the company's technology researcher, Vishal Shrotriya, at the Organic Photovoltaics conference in Philadelphia this week. But I'm going to hold off discussing any details of the paper for now. Why? Because Dina has invited me to come and visit Solarmer next month, so I hope to provide a full report on this upstart company's plastic fantastic organic PV breakthrough in the future.