Carbon Trust and Cambridge Uni join forces on organic photovoltaics

Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory and the Carbon Trust have formed a joint venture company to develop organic solar PV technology with £4.5 million initial investment from the Trust and speciality chemicals firm Rhodia.

Solar cells made with organic semiconductors work very differently to those made with silicon, and are closer in operating principle to photosynthesis in green plants.

Cavendish Labs has fine-tuned the capability for fabricating large-scale plastic electronic devices on flexible materials using roll-to-roll processes. So the new company will focus on developing organic photovoltaics (OPV) on flexible rolls, enabling them to be used more readily and discreetly on buildings – and potentially other objects – than conventional rigid photovoltaic panels.

Further development of the materials and fabrication techniques could provide OPV-generated power at a price substantially lower than that offered by first- and second-generation technologies for certain applications, which could open up new markets for solar.

The new company, Eight19, so called because it takes 8min 19s for light to travel from the sun to the earth, has been spun-out from the Carbon Trust’s Cambridge University-TTP Advanced Photovoltaic Research Accelerator and created in partnership with Cavendish professors Sir Richard Friend, Henning Sirringhaus and Neil Greenham.

The company will continue to benefit from Cavendish’s research output.

“The launch of Eight19 and the deployment of low-cost organic solar cells could help to revolutionise solar power production by opening up new markets,” said Dr Robert Trezona, head of R&D at the Carbon Trust. “Cost reduction through the development of advanced technology and innovative design are key to driving forward mass production and making solar power more affordable.”

The Eight19 team is pursuing a design-for-manufacture strategy that focuses on the unique attributes of organic photovoltaics, combining both specific product performance characteristics and low cost of energy.

Unlike other more familiar thin film solar platforms, organic solar cells are not inherently limited by constraints around material supply and toxicity, and benefit from a number of fundamental advantages including potentially very low-cost production enabled by low temperature and high throughput processing typical of plastic films. Organic solar cells potentially deliver further value throughout the supply chain, from ease of installation for construction companies to producers seeking simplified manufacturing integration.

The market for organic solar cells has the potential to reach $500 million by 2015 and to grow four-fold to $2 billion by 2020, according to Nanomarkets, 2009, driven by applications such as building-integrated photovoltaics. This could save up to 900 million tonnes of CO2 by 2050, says the Carbon Trust.

“This represents a great opportunity to transfer new technology out of the university, based on recent advances in fundamental science,” said professor Sir Richard Friend.