Polyera achieves certified, record OPV efficiency of 9.1%
February 16, 2012
Polyera has achieved a certified world-record 9.1% efficient polymer/fullerene organic solar cell in an inverted bulk heterojunction architecture using its newest proprietary ActivInk® PV2000 semiconductor material.
The high efficiency of this material in an inverted architecture, in combination with its other leading-edge properties, represents a substantial breakthrough in the development of organic solar cell technology for large-scale manufacturing of low-cost, lightweight, flexible, and optically semi-transparent solar modules. The device performance was certified by Newport Corp.’s PV Cell Lab.
The latest results from Polyera represent a significant step in that direction, demonstrating 9.1% power-conversion efficiency (i.e. how much energy from the sun is converted into usable electricity) combined with other very important – but often overlooked – factors that affect a technology’s true commercial viability. An inverted cell architecture, for example, provides a number of commercially-relevant benefits, such as making solar panels easier to manufacture and improving their useful life. Polyera’s active layer materials can also be deposited using a significantly broader range of film thicknesses without lowering cell efficiency; this broader process window improves yields and further simplifies manufacturing. Polyera’s materials can also be processed at low enough temperatures to be compatible with a wide range of simple printing processes and common, inexpensive plastic substrates like PET or PEN.