Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

Organic photovoltaics developer Konarka Technologies and Konica Minolta Holdings have signed a comprehensive R&D collaboration and strategic investment agreement. The deal calls for an investment of $20 million by Konica Minolta in Konarka and for the companies to start full-scale collaboration in April in the joint development and distribution of organic thin-film PV.

Australian-based materials provider, Dyesol has established a German subsidiary in Bavaria to pursue commercialization of dye solar cell (DSC) technologies. The company said that due to Germany’s leading position in the solar industry it would seek collaboration and partnerships with industrial and government partners to bring DSC products to market.

A three-year program is underway to commercialize highly flexible organic photovoltaics (OPV) modules using inexpensive materials produced with compatibler roll-to-roll printing and coating techniques. The European research project, dubbed ‘HIFLEX,’ is being coordinated by Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) and includes several universities as well as industrial partners, Dr Schenk and Agfa-Gevaert. Commercially, the technology is being developed for a wide variety of ICT products in the mobile electronics market.

Organic photovoltaics developer Solarmer Energy has achieved the highest conversion efficiency recorded so far for a plastic OPV champion cell—7.9%. The aperture-area test results, recently certified by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, represent an improvement over independent exams conducted a few months ago at Newport Corp.’s Technology and Application Center’s PV Lab, where cell efficiencies of 7.6% and module efficiencies of 3.9% were recorded.

Having recently had their organic solar cells verified by Fraunhofer ISE with a power conversion efficiency of 6.07% for a tandem solar cell (active area of 2cm²), Dresden-based Heliatek has received a new round of funding to the tune of US$27 million to build its first production facility in Dresden. The start up had previously noted that it planned to increase the conversation efficiencies to 10%. Heliatek is targeting in particular mobile market and architectural (BIPV) applications.