03.10.17
Solliance announced the demonstration of an industrially-applicable roll-to-roll process for the production of solar cells, achieving a record 12.6% conversion efficiency on cell level.
Perovskite microcrystals are a promising material to make high-yielding, thin-film solar cells. They can be processed into thin, light-weight and potentially semitransparent modules that could eventually be integrated in building materials such as windows or curved construction elements. Solliance and its research partners focus on using scalable, industrial processes towards the fabrication of large-area modules.
The roll-to-roll (R2R) process was developed for both the electron transport and the perovskite layers on the new Solliance dual R2R coating line, as developed by Solliance with its partners VDL Enabling Technologies Group (VDL ETG), Smit Thermal Solutions and Bosch-Rexroth.
The in-line roll-to-roll coating, drying and annealing processes were executed at a linear speed of 5 m/min on a 30-cm wide commercial PET/ITO foil and under ambient conditions. After applying a newly developed off-line single device finishing step, individual solar cells of 0.1cm2 achieved efficiencies of up to 12.6%, measured under maximum power point tracking conditions during five minutes. All process steps on this roll-to-roll line were performed using low cost materials whilst keeping the process temperatures below 120⁰C.
“The demonstration of R2R processing at 5 m/min of perovskite layers for solar cells indicates that high-volume production, and hence with an expected very low cost, will be possible in the future,” explains Pim Groen, professor of SMART materials at the Technical University of Delft and program manager at Holst Centre/Solliance.
VDL ETG has been leading the consortium of equipment manufacturing companies that designed and built the R2R coating line.
“Dyesol is very pleased with this breakthrough; we are committed to developing the industry standard for R2R perovskite solar cell (PSC) PV manufacturing in conjunction with Solliance and this result is an important step along this route,” said Richard Caldwell, Dyesol managing director.
The current world record efficiency of a small lab scale perovskite-based PV cell is 22.1%.
“The challenge is to upscale perovskite cells to larger size, industrially-manufacturable modules with high efficiency and long lifetime at low cost. These 12.6% R2R up-scaled perovskite-based solar cells are a first and important step in this development,” said Ronn Andriessen, program director at Solliance.
Solliance is a cross-border Dutch-Flemish-German thin-film photovoltaics research initiative conducting advanced research on the development of perovskite-based PV modules and its applications with its industrial partners Solartek, Dyesol and Panasonic.
Perovskite microcrystals are a promising material to make high-yielding, thin-film solar cells. They can be processed into thin, light-weight and potentially semitransparent modules that could eventually be integrated in building materials such as windows or curved construction elements. Solliance and its research partners focus on using scalable, industrial processes towards the fabrication of large-area modules.
The roll-to-roll (R2R) process was developed for both the electron transport and the perovskite layers on the new Solliance dual R2R coating line, as developed by Solliance with its partners VDL Enabling Technologies Group (VDL ETG), Smit Thermal Solutions and Bosch-Rexroth.
The in-line roll-to-roll coating, drying and annealing processes were executed at a linear speed of 5 m/min on a 30-cm wide commercial PET/ITO foil and under ambient conditions. After applying a newly developed off-line single device finishing step, individual solar cells of 0.1cm2 achieved efficiencies of up to 12.6%, measured under maximum power point tracking conditions during five minutes. All process steps on this roll-to-roll line were performed using low cost materials whilst keeping the process temperatures below 120⁰C.
“The demonstration of R2R processing at 5 m/min of perovskite layers for solar cells indicates that high-volume production, and hence with an expected very low cost, will be possible in the future,” explains Pim Groen, professor of SMART materials at the Technical University of Delft and program manager at Holst Centre/Solliance.
VDL ETG has been leading the consortium of equipment manufacturing companies that designed and built the R2R coating line.
“Dyesol is very pleased with this breakthrough; we are committed to developing the industry standard for R2R perovskite solar cell (PSC) PV manufacturing in conjunction with Solliance and this result is an important step along this route,” said Richard Caldwell, Dyesol managing director.
The current world record efficiency of a small lab scale perovskite-based PV cell is 22.1%.
“The challenge is to upscale perovskite cells to larger size, industrially-manufacturable modules with high efficiency and long lifetime at low cost. These 12.6% R2R up-scaled perovskite-based solar cells are a first and important step in this development,” said Ronn Andriessen, program director at Solliance.
Solliance is a cross-border Dutch-Flemish-German thin-film photovoltaics research initiative conducting advanced research on the development of perovskite-based PV modules and its applications with its industrial partners Solartek, Dyesol and Panasonic.