Technology to print solar cells like money

Victorian Minister for Energy and Resources, Peter Batchelor, announced the beginning of trials to print solar cells using technology developed by the CSIRO, a partner in the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium project.

The three year $12 million Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium (VICOSC) solar cell project is 50% funded by the Victorian Government through an Energy Technology Innovation Strategy Sustainable Energy Research and Development grant. The VICOSC is a collaboration between academia and industry with other partners including University of Melbourne, Monash University, Securency, BP Solar, Bluescope Steel, Merck and Nanovic.

The purpose of the launch was to highlight the advances being made by Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium, which spans Monash, Melbourne Uni and CSIRO, working in the area of different types of solar cells.

World leading research aims to develop flexible, large area, cost-effective, reel-to-reel printable plastic solar cells. “The production of these film-like solar cells will be literally as easy as printing money,” Mr Batchelor said. The process uses elements of the technology employed in the production of Australia's polymer banknotes.

The Monash team is a joint venture between Chemistry and Materials Engineering, with the lead Materials Engineering staff involved being Udo Bach, Yi-Bing Cheng and Maria Forsyth  and from Chemistry Doug MacFarlane, Leone Spiccia and Alan Bond.

According to the CSIRO's Gerry Wilson, print trials that have been conducted ran at 200 metres a minute, which would work out to 100 kilometres per day under normal manufacturing conditions. Based on the cells attaining 10% efficiency, over 5 months enough plastic solar cells could be printed to generate a gigawatt of power.

The printable solar cells offer several advantages over traditional solar panel technology including of the potential to mass produce the cells cheaply and install them over large areas with uneven surfaces.

The flexible and lightweight nature of the cells make them ideal for a myriad of uses and the cells can also be made thin enough to become semi-transparent, allowing for applications such as windows. Given their ability to float, more novel uses could include blankets for dams and pools to reduce evaporation while generating power.

However, even if the 10% conversion efficiency rate is achieved within 5 years, that's still far behind solid polycrystalline and monocrystalline solar panels currently available that achieve up to 19% efficiency; that is, the ability to convert 19% of the sunlight the panel is exposed to into electricity. For smaller applications, such as home solar power, solid panels will likely be the preferred choice for many years to come.

There are a number of problems about making solar cells on plastic substrates, as opposed to glass, and Yi-Bing  and his team have been busily - and successfully - solving them. 

The printing trials are occurring six months ahead of schedule and it's estimated the printable solar cells will hit the general market in about five years.

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