Photovoltaics

With escalating concerns over climate change and unsustainable energy sources, it is of great concern that the world economy has not achieved faster levels of de-carbonisation.

One of the largest photovoltaic solar projects in the world will be located in California to deliver 1.65 billion kilowatt-hours of renewable energy annually.

Dye-Sensitised Thin Film solar cells manufactured by G24 Innovations (G24i) have been integrated into the sail of Swan's '2041' boat, which is currently sailing around the world raising awareness on climate change.

MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.

A world record of 40.8 percent in solar cell efficiency with a photovoltaic device has been claimed by the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US.

DuPont Microcircuit Materials introduces new Solamet® PV159 for photovoltaic solar cells.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a radio telescope currently under development by an international consortium who aim to probe fundamental physics, the origin and evolution of the Universe, the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the formation and distribution of planets.

IDTechEx report on the SEMICON West event held in San Francisco in mid July - an event with over one thousand exhibitors covering the silicon supply chain.

G24i will use investment to facilitate its rapid expansion of production and sales capability.

Innovative design is used to achieve superior solar conversion without optical tracking.

Researchers have found a simple way to uniformly deposit between one and five layers of graphene to create transistors and proof-of concept electrodes for organic photovoltaics.

It is now generally accepted that the printed electronics is headed to be a business of the order of $300 billion yearly in about twenty years time.

G24 Innovations (G24i) has won the Premier Product Award at the prestigious Business Commitment to the Environment (BCE) Environmental Leadership Awards.

Printed electronics today is mainly a matter of inorganic rather than organic chemistry and the next ten years are unlikely to see the inorganic part drop below 50% of the high value materials required.

HP and Xtreme Energetics have announced that they have entered into an agreement for the development of a solar energy system designed to generate electricity at twice the efficiency and half the cost of traditional solar panels.

IDTechEx shed light on progress of technologies at Photovoltaics beyond Conventional Silicon conference held in Denver.

This week IDTechEx is holding its first event dedicated to Photovoltaic (PV) technologies beyond conventional silicon. It covers the increasing work on CIGS, CdTe, Organic PV and many other chemistry devices, offering benefits over conventional silicon PV such as cost, weight and ease of installation.

Plextronics, Inc. announced today the introduction of its ink systems for organic solar cell fabrication at the IDTechEx PV Beyond Conventional Silicon Conference, which is being held this week in Denver, Colorado.

IDTechEx provide feedback of the Solar Innovation and Investment meeting held between the 21st and the 23rd of May in London.

Companies with proven technology are still able to attract significant investment even with concerns over the impact of the credit crunch on the renewables sector.

Plextronics, Inc. has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Korea Parts & Fasteners (KPF) to create a research and development center for organic photovoltaic process development.

The IDTechEx conference Printed Electronics Asia in Tokyo on October 8-9 will reveal many new advances and initiatives by the giant corporations.

Analysts see printed electronics rising exponentially to around $300 billion in twenty years' time, with demand for conductive inks alone reaching several billion dollars yearly five years from now.

Dr Harry Zervos, Industry Analyst from IDTechEx says the move towards plastic electronics is a natural progression in the search for products and technologies which are 'greener', more efficient and ultimately more cost effective to produce.

Conventional silicon photovoltaics is a non-starter in Antarctica because it is very poor at low angles of incidence of light let alone low levels of illumination or reflected light and it is heavy.

Dr Zervos at IDTechEx looks at the global picture for dye-sensitized solar cells.

Over the last three years significant developments have been made with efficiency of organic based PV cells.

Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx summarises the 33rd Annual IEEE Photovoltaics event and the state of the industry in the first part of this two part article.

Nano-Proprietary, Inc. announced that its subsidiary Applied Nanotech, Inc. has been selected to be awarded a new phase I Small Business Innovation Research Program grant by the U.S. Department of Energy.

One of the biggest obstacles to widespread use of solar cells as a clean source of energy is cost.

Nanosilver is so tiny it can go right to the surface of an organism and essentially shoot ions into the organism, says a research scientist.

A claimed breakthrough barrier technology from Singapore protects sensitive devices like organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and solar cells from moisture 1000 times more effectively than any other technology available in the market.

G24 Innovations' solar cells effective in world's most inhospitable environments

Chuck Griggs, VP Applications Engineering of Fujifilm Dimatix saw the advantages of inkjet as non-contact and drop on demand reduding both materials processing and environmental impact.

IDTechEx visited OTB Engineering who have links to Philips and other local companies active in printed and thin film electronics.

Reflecting the interests of this huge new industry, IDTechEx will now stage a conference Photovoltaics beyond Conventional Silicon in Denver Colorado 17-18 June.

Printed electronics is evolving so fast that the full variety of benefits arising has yet to become clear.

The darkest material ever measured has been created by researchers in the US, making it 4 times darker than the previous recorded record.

Germany's expertise in industrial production, printing processes, and chemicals - all essential elements to printed electronics - make it a leading location for investments.

Recently, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced that they have moved closer to creating a thin-film solar cell that can compete with the efficiency of the more common silicon-based solar cell.

Shozo Yanagida to join renewable energy pioneer's advisory board.

Photovoltaic innovator Konarka Technologies reports manufacturing breakthrough using FUJIFILM Dimatix inkjet technology for advanced materials deposition.

The company states that they have developed the world's first method for fabricating a honeycomb structure on the surface of a 150-millimeter square multi-crystalline silicon by combining laser patterning and wet etching.

Eleven technology led projects will focus on developing advanced solar photovoltaic (PV) technology manufacturing processes and products.

The vibrant new printed electronics industry is being created as energetically in Germany as anywhere else in the world.

Jim Mellon has invested in Emerging Metals Ltd in the UK. He says photovoltaics will be

The photovoltaic business is fragmenting as it grows to tens of billions of dollars yearly. Conventional silicon will be around for at least ten years but the many large new market segments that are opening up will be served by the new photovoltaics.

OTTI, the East-Bavarian Technology Transfer Institute, will host an experts' forum on printed electronics 3-4 March in Regensburg, Germany.

A stretchable, flexible self-cleaning device that can be used as a mobile phone or keyboard that harvests solar energy and senses the environment by using nanotechnology was launched this week.

With increasing global demand for energy sources beyond gas and oil, there is now more effort than ever before on renewable energy, especially photovoltaics.

The first solar bag powerful enough to charge a laptop was unveiled last month and will be available later this spring.

Global solar energy is first CIGS manufacturer to achieve consistent full-scale production of 10 percent average solar cell efficiency on flexible/lightweight substrate.

The money spent on printed and potentially printed electronics doubled in 2007, as did the number of organisations participating.

Organic based solution processable devices may revolutionise the lighting and photovoltaic industries of the future.

Dye sensitised solar cells and organic photovoltaics mimic photosynthesis.

leading photovoltaics expert in Israel has demonstrated how metallic wires mounted on conductive glass can form the basis of solar cells that produce electricity with efficiency similar to that of conventional, silicon-based cells - but are much cheaper to produce.

Germany is the world's largest photovoltaic (PV) market with approximately 1,150 MWp of newly installed PV power and a turnover of €3.7 billion in 2006 - continued double-digit growth is expected, forecasts "Invest in Germany" the inward investment promotion agency of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany will be focusing on printing processes for electronic and photovoltaic products whilst working towards developing technologies for printed electronics and 'functional packaging' over the next 3 years.

Applied Materials, Inc. is pioneering a new era in photovoltaic (PV) research and development with the opening of its SunFab Technology Center, one of the industry's most advanced facilities dedicated to next generation solar technology applications.

Inorganic semiconductor technologies with conventional patterning offer immediate solutions, according to Kodak, which offers Chemical Vapor Deposition CVD to make it happen.

Printed photovoltaics and batteries have reached a technological tipping point. With demand for power skyrocketing, IDTechEx find that the market for thin film photovoltaics beyond silicon will reach $1 billion in 2012 and $6 billion in 2014. Here Raghu Das, CEO, summarizes some of the findings of the new IDTechEx study - Printed and Thin film Photovoltaics and Batteries.

Printed electronics is a term that covers printed and potentially printed electronics and electrics. It is the basis of an emerging $300 billion business embracing transistors, memory, displays, solar cells, batteries, sensors, lasers and much more. Printed Electronics USA will include new developments in printed electronics and the more specific use of these new technologies.

Europe has far more organisations active in the subject of printed and potentially printed electronics than any other continent.

Transistors are the engine of the new electronics just as the silicon chip is the engine of the traditional electronics.

Procurement of equipment is already underway for printing conductive inks, metallised circuits and novel barrier layers onto flexible substrates and further R&D programmes for new customers will be introduced in the coming months.

Five Star says the ElectroSperse pastes deliver the same uniform particle size and consistent rheology seen in Five Star dispersions, enabling customers to print fine features consistently and economically.

Plextronics has a detailed technical program for step by step improvement of the compounds used, with every prospect of getting to 10% efficiency before many years have passed.

Alan Hodgson follows up with his report on the Digital Fabrication conference held in Alaska, 16-21 September 2007.

Although there are very few Western giant corporations active in printed and potentially printed electronics compared to East Asia, there are some new entrants in 2007 and some of those already active have sharply increased the level of their activity, particularly in Europe.

The world's biggest exhibition in photovoltaics was held in parallel to the 22nd European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference in Milan, Italy, from 3rd to 7th September. It was an impressive event with overall around 500 exhibitors, 3000 scientists, industry representatives and politicians from 83 countries.

IDTechEx has hosted several successful RFID conferences in Tokyo, Japan but the Printed Electronics Asia conference, September 11-12 was a first for them. It was very successful. Indeed, it was sold out, with over 180 people attending and an exhibition. IDTechEx will now do a much bigger conference and exhibition on this subject in Tokyo next year. Many new trends were revealed by the international line up of best-in-class speakers.

Printed electronics will eventually interest a high proportion of the seven billion people that will be on the planet because it will transform their lives. It will eventually involve over 100,000 manufacturers. Today, printed and potentially printed electronics is already of interest to over 10,000 organisations.

In the race to make clean technologies more efficient and marketable a breakthrough has been made by Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), collaborating with Innovalight, Inc., showing that a new and important effect called Multiple Exciton Generation (MEG) occurs efficiently in silicon nanocrystals.

Work on inorganic thin film photovoltaic devices beyond crystalline and amorphous silicon is now wide ranging, both geographically and in topic.

In Åbo Akademi University in Finland there is a program on Organic Electronics run by Professor Ronald Österbacka in the Applied Physics department. Electronics on paper, board, plastic and fiber based materials is in their sights.

There are far more developers of inorganic compound photovoltaics than of organic versions in the world. In particular, there are more developers of copper indium gallium diselenide CIGS solar cells than for any other non-silicon technology.

Last year, photovoltaic modules had a global market volume of 8 billion euros. The segment is expected to grow by more than 20 percent annually between now and 2020.

The smart fabrics industry is a $340 million dollar industry growing 19% annually and projected to reach $720 million by 2008, according to a recent study.

The company's result of 5.4 percent establishes a new world record for single layer organic solar cells as certified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in Golden, Colorado.

Konarka's position enhanced

Prof Bernard Kippelen, Georgia Institute of Technology, United States at Printed Electronics USA 2005