Fraunhofer Scientist Wins With Organic Solar Cells

Scientist Jan Meiß has been awarded with the
"žGreen Photonics" for young academics at the Hanover Fair. Within his
dissertation in cooperation with Heliatek GmbH and Fraunhofer IPMS "“ COMEDD he
succeeded in the development of new concepts for organic solar cells with high
impact: his solar cells are four times more efficient as conventional organic
solar cells.

Producing electricity from sun light
sounds easy and tempting. But photovoltaics came under criticism because of its
high costs. Depending on the type of the solar cells costs are caused by rare
and expensive materials.

The so called "žorganic photovoltaic"
(OPV) "“ also known as "plastic solar cells" "“ has a high potential for the
reduction of costs. The technology is now ready to enter the market and can be
carried out under low temperatures (< 400°C) using cost-saving materials and
the complete solar cell could be thinner than 500 nanometres! Organic materials
are dyes based on carbonates, well known in the daily life as food colorant or
car finish. The vision is a light weight, thin solar cell at plastic foil with
a weight of 500 g per square meter active solar cell area, which can be
rollable, transportable and easy integrable. Especially transparent devices are
high of interest for the integration of photovoltaic into faces of buildings or
"power windows" "“ windows, which can be used as a sunscreen as well as power
generator.

The dissertation of Jan Meiß resulted
in important progress for organic solar cells: he developed amongst others
alternatives to conventional transparent conductive layers (e.g. ITO "“
Indium-Tin-Oxid), which can be conserve resources, save costs and are easy to
produce.

Jan Meiß says, "Because of an
optimized layer composition we succeded in the development of an organic solar
cell with an efficiency of 4,9 % and a transmission of 20%. This means:
one-fifth of the irradiated light goes completely through the organic solar
cell. The efficiency of the transparent organic solar cell has been seven times
higher as known from literature and is unbeaten until now."

"Green Photonics" award young
academics, who work on innovative optical technologies with economically
potential for a sustainable life. Jan Meiß has achieved this objectives with his
dissertation at the Technical University of Dresden (IAPP) with support of
Heliatek and the Fraunhofer IPMS "“ COMEDD. The TU Dresden and Fraunhofer IPMS "“
COMEDD has established a cooperation model "Innovationscampus" for R&D of
novel organic devices.