Belgian research centre imec has announced the development of its new organic PV cell. Developed in conjunction with Pennsylvanian technology company Plextronics and Belgian chemical company Solvay, the polymer-based single junction cell achieves an efficiency of up to 6.9%. A module using the same polymer achieved an efficiency of 5% across an area of 25cm2.
On display this week at the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition (EU PVSEC), the organic solar cell utilises an innovative inverted architecture developed by imec, which reported that this inverted architecture offers an increase in performance of more than 0.5% over the architecture typically used in organic cells.
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According to the research centre, the recorded efficiency of 6.9% was the highest that had been obtained for cells based on Plextronic’s polymer, and to its knowledge the highest obtained for cells using an inverted architecture.
Tom Aernouts, R&D team leader for Organic Photovoltaics at imec: “We are delighted to present these excellent results, achieved by combining imec’s expertise and knowhow in organic photovoltaics R&D with Plextronics’ innovative material. With further optimizations to the material as well as to the architecture, for example by introducing a multi-junction featuring different layers of different polymers each capturing another part of the light spectrum, we envision organic solar cell lifetimes of over 10 years and conversion efficiencies of 10% in two to three years, ultimately aiming at industry-relevant solutions.”
imec is currently exhibiting at the 26th EU PVSEC in Hamburg, Germany, and can be found at booth B4G/C11.
