Funded by the European Commission with whopping grant of €3.5 million ($4.86 million), the MatHero Project takes on the onus of providing us with environmentally friendly, organic photovoltaics that are efficient and cost effective. As a part of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), one of Europe’s leading energy research establishments’ initiative, you can expect some path-breaking innovations from this project.
The new environmentally compatible organic solar cells are light, mechanically flexible and offer an array of applications. The so-called “plastic solar cells” have several advantages and support “Green” processes for materials synthesis. To keep the development competitive, MatHero focuses on reducing production costs and increasing the lifespan of the organic cells.
One of the biggest advantages of the new photovoltaics is that they can be produced in random colors. This is where the spunk is! An array of colors also means customized design and many more usage scenarios. The fact that you can print these organic cells with low consumption of materials and energy, makes them cost-effective, and hence support volume production.
According to Dr. Alexander Colsmann, head of the organic photovoltaics group at KIT’s Light Technology Institute (LTI), the aim of the project is to demo a 500 mW organic solar cell for off-grid applications, which is printed from organic components. This also means other factors like production costs and longevity in comparison with inorganic cells is taken into consideration for its success.
MatHero will concentrate on the processes that go into the development of a cell. This includes the creation of materials, coating, and printing with printable polymer-based materials that can be made without chlorinated solvents. As long as they can be printed, the use of other materials like metal oxides will also be considered.
Some of the challenges that this project has to overcome, in order to be commercially viable are: cell energy conversion rates must be improved by more than 10%, the cost of synthesizing materials for the cells must be reduced, and the cells should have a lifespan of more than 10 years, to be commercially placed. Lets see how this project evolves in the future and who gets a piece out of the €3.5 million!
