Development of highly integrated Organic Photovoltaic Module
Sunlight as a clean and inexhaustible source of energy provides an effective way in diminishing the green house effect. Solar Cells or Photovoltaic (PV) serves as a proven technology known for its ability in capturing and reusing sunlight to be used as source of energy, but the cost of generating power with the current PV technology is very high prohibiting the wide spread use of PVs as a result of this. Extensive amount of time has been already gone for research and development of Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) in a promise to provide a much improved sunlight conversion rate. During this research it was discovered that C60 Fullerene offers a very good organic semi-conductivity and it can be applied to the OPV module as an acceptor. The Fullerene was supplied for module production by Frontier Carbon Corporation (FCC) a Mitsubishi Corporation subsidiary and the world’s largest producer of Fullerene. Like silicon PVs, OPVs employ a P-N diode junction as a generating active layer. The biggest challenge for the past 30 years in R&D has been in rising the low power output of PVs. AIST during the 2005 has managed to achieve a 4.0% conversion rate highest at that time by introducing of a bulk-hetero junction (i-layer). But in a new highly integrated OPV module which has been jointly developed by Mitsubishi Corporation, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology (AIST) and Tokki Corp, fullerene (C60) is used as a n-type of semiconductor (acceptor) and Phthalocyanine (CuPc) as a p-type of semiconductor (donor). The newly developed module uses laser-scribing technology on a glass substrate. In this process the organic semiconductor materials are deposited on the substrate and then divided into several cells with the laser. This technology eliminates the need for, deposition mask patterning, which is used in conventional methods. The new module is highly integrated and should improve sunlight conversion efficiency. It is expected that the newly developed OPV will feature a light , thin and colorful film PV modules expected to be used in windows, walls, cloths, textiles, outdoor equipment and toys.
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