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Topics Covered
Background
Organic Photovoltaics (OPVs) Thin
Films
Development of Organic Photovoltaics
Economical Advantages of Organic Photovoltaics
Organic Photovoltaics Products
OPV-Based Power
Plastic
Organic Photovoltaics Market Overview
Summary
Background
NanoMarkets is a leading provider of market and technology
research and industry analysis services for the thin film, organic and printable
electronics businesses (which we refer to as TOP Electronics.) Since the firm
founding, NanoMarkets has published over two
dozen comprehensive research reports on emerging technology markets. Topics
covered have included sensors, displays, OLEDs, HB-LEDs, e-paper, RFID,
photovoltaics, smart packaging, novel battery technologies, printed
electronics, organic electronics, emerging memory and storage technologies
and other promising technologies. Our client roster is a who of companies in
specialty chemicals, materials, electronics applications and manufacturing. NanoMarkets also hosts a blog at www.nanotopblog.com where we
discuss technology trends, company announcements and the industry on-going
progress.
Organic Photovoltaics (OPVs) Thin Films
Over the last decade, portable electronic devices such as mobile phones, mp3
players, PDAs and laptop computers have proliferated at a spectacular rate.
Compact rechargeable batteries have been fundamental to the success of these
products. So have increasingly powerful microchips, whose capacity has continued
to observe the exponential growth described by Moore's Law. Unfortunately, the
energy density of batteries has not.
Clever engineers have been able to maintain an acceptable time between
charges by using power management software, new power-management chips, and more
energy-efficient components, but such tweaks can only achieve so much. If portable
electronic are to become still more powerful, consumers will either have to
plug into the grid more often, or product designers will have to enable access
to a more convenient source of energy.
And what could be more accessible than light? Efficient solar cells, drawing
on sunlight or even artificial light, could extend the time between charges,
perhaps even indefinitely.
The idea isn't new. Solar powered calculators have been available for
decades. They require little power, however, and energy hogs like mobile phones
present a more difficult problem.
An emerging technology, thin-film organic photovoltaics (OPVs) and dye-sensitized
cells (DSCs) may be the solution. A host of companies is busily
developing materials and intellectual property to establish themselves in this
new market, from chemical giants such as BASF to highly focused start-ups such
as Konarka and Plextronics.
Organic Photovoltaic Markets, a recent study by NanoMarkets,
looks at the activities of these and many other companies to estimate the
opportunity represented by these technologies.
Development of Organic Photovoltaics
Scientists have known since 1906 that organic materials can turn light into
electricity, but it wasn't until the 1950s that researchers began using common
organic dyes such as chlorophyll and methylene blue in photovoltaic devices. In
the 1980s, work with polymers such as poly(sulfur nitride) began, and by 1986, a
scientist at Eastman Kodak had made the breakthrough discovery that combining
donor and acceptor materials in a single cell dramatically improved
efficiency.
In the last two decades, new materials and more sophisticated architectures
have advanced OPVs to the point that efficiencies exceeding 6 percent have
been achieved, and 8-10 percent is likely within the next few years. Even more
efficient are DSCs, hybrids that combine organometallic dyes and mesoporous
inorganic oxides. Discovered in 1991, these devices have achieved efficiencies
as high as 11 percent.
Economical Advantages of Organic Photovoltaics
The efficiency of OPVs and DSCs compares poorly with silicon photovoltaics, which offer
efficiencies over 20 percent, but other advantages, particularly low cost,
flexibility and performance in low or variable light, make them competitive for
a range of niche applications extending beyond portable electronics to
building-integrated systems, signage, packaging and smart fabrics.
Organic
photovoltaics are relatively cheap to fabricate using inexpensive,
well-understood coating processes such as inkjet printing or spin coating on
large, flexible substrates such as plastic. The flexible product is light, easy
to install and versatileor example, it might be rolled up for storage. And the
nature of the photoactive materials themselves means OPVs and DSCs perform
well in dim or variable light, unlike silicon.
Each of these characteristics is well suited to portable electronics. Being
inexpensive, the new capability would not add prohibitively to the cost of the
device, be it a mobile phone, mp3 player, laptop or another consumer device.
Given their physical properties, the cells could be either laminated to the case
or embedded in a flexible peripheral. The responsiveness of the cells would
allow them to charge even indoors, an important consideration since portable
electronics are not typically exposed to sunlight.
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Organic Photovoltaics Products
Several products are already on the market. For example, U.K.-based G24i is
commercializing DSC-based phone chargers in Africa and India, where they can
provide a more reliable primary or back-up power source than the grids. Called
Gcell Flex, they are able to supply up to 20 minutes of talk time for every hour
of charging. G24i has been able to reduce the cost of the product by a factor of
five in the last two years, to just $20, and the company has invested $120
million in a Wales manufacturing facility.
"G24i is targeting the emerging markets of Africa and India, unlike its main
competitor Konarka, because G24i understand that mobile phone usage in Africa is
set to explode from 600m handsets to 2 billion by 2015," says Philip Drachman,
author of the NanoMarkets study.
Konarka, a Lowell, Massachusetts-based spinout from the University of
Massachusetts at Lowell, is supplying the U.S. Army with solar-powered battery
chargers based on its OPV-based Power Plastic, which can be flexed to a 2-inch
diameter. Konarka is also working with Toppan Forms, a Tokyo printing and
information management firm, on the commercialization of Power Plastic within
the sophisticated Japanese electronics market. Toppan brings well-developed
roll-to-roll printing processes to the project. A partnership with SKYShades,
announced earlier this year, could lead to the commercialization of canopies and
other tension membrane fabric structures incorporating Power Plastic.
OPV-Based Power Plastic
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An IP powerhouse, Konarka has attracted over $100 million in venture capital
and equity funding. Its chief scientist is Alan Heeger, who shared the 2000
Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on conductive polymers. In October 2008,
the firm announced the opening of "the world's largest" roll-to-roll thin-film
photovoltaic manufacturing facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
"This facility has state-of-the-art printing capabilities that are ready for
full operation, with the future potential to produce over a gigawatt of flexible
plastic solar modules per year," says Howard Berke, executive chairman and
co-founder of Konarka. The output of the facility, which has a capacity
exceeding 10 million square meters of material per year, will be used for
indoor, portable, outdoor and building-integrated applicationsssentially the
entire range of applications suited to organic
photovoltaics.
A spinout from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg-based Plextronics, is
centered on a portfolio of tunable conductive, semi-conductive and photoactive
inks and materials called Plexcore. Since 2002, the firm has raised over $40
million from investors including Applied Materials and Solvay.
Like Konarka, Plextronics has tapped into the defense market, and it has a
three-year, $14 million agreement to work with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory
to research and produce printed electronic products for military applications
signed in 2007.
More recently, the firm announced plans to create a research and development
center for organic photovoltaic process development outside Seoul with
Korea Parts & Fasteners. And in September 2008, Plextronics and IMEC, an
independent nanoelectronics research institute located in Belgium, agreed to
collaborate on the development of a reproducible process for high-efficiency
organic solar cells using Plexcore materials and inks. IMEC intends to develop
OPV cells with an efficiency of 10 percent by 2012.
"Both collaborations allow us to learn how our material sets perform in
different processes and structures to ensure that our material and inks are
robust for high-volume manufacturing," says Jim Dietz, vice president of
business development Plextronics.
"Our collaboration with IMEC relates to testing our materials in IMEC's
devices," Dietz says. "While there is no doubt that advances in device design
will help boost OPV efficiencies, we think that, at this point, there are more
meaningful gains to be had related to materials improvements," he says.
"Plextronics' holistic focus on designing and synthesizing new p- and n-type
semiconductors and conductive polymers, formulating such polymers into ink
systems, perfecting the use of these inks in basic and advanced devices, has
been part of our success in demonstrating a 5.98 percent NRE certified test cell
in a relatively short time."
Organic Photovoltaics Market Overview
Penetration into existing and new PV markets will depend on four factors,
according to NanoMarkets: costs, not only in $/Wp but also $/m2 of product
and power availability (kWh/Wp/annum); technical and environmental profile;
added value for the consumer and architects; and ease of production at
economical scales. To predict how its own photovoltaic inks and technology would
scale in high-volume manufacturing, Plextronics has worked with its partners to
develop a simulation model.
"Based upon this model, we clearly demonstrate to our customers the pathway
to sub $1/Wp costs," says Dietz. "We are driving our OPV research
around the critical factors that affect manufacturing costs."
The company's
customers consider opportunities for off-grid and consumer applications as first
entry points given the lower efficiency required, he states. "At 10 percent
efficiencies, we think that customers will begin to consider certain on-grid
applications."
NanoMarkets is cautious in his projections for the
technology.
"OPV and
DSC
technologies are so far behind on the conversion-efficiency curve when compared
to conventional PV that they can succeed only in markets where their substrate
flexibility and ability to perform in dim or variable light give them a
competitive advantage," Drachman says.
Silicon is a reliable and mature technology, he notes. "It will take quite
some time for OPV cells to enter silicon PV's market space."
Summary
There are, meanwhile, several viable market niches, he says. They include
applications where there is adequate space to install the photovoltaic panels;
areas where there is abundant sunlight for generating large amounts of energy;
and novel applications unavailable to bulky conventional photovoltaicsuch as
battery chargers.
NanoMarkets projects that the worldwide market for OPV- and DSC-based
photovoltaics will total about $54 million in 2009. By 2012, the figure
could climb to $276 million, and by 2015 reach $915 million.
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It is hard not to be impressed with the visions of such companies as Konarka
for organic PV charging batteries for the energy-hungry consumer electronics
devices; however, this is still a vision and compelling business cases have yet
to emerge for these applications either on the demand or supply side, NanoMarkets
says.
Source: "Organic Photovoltaic Markets", Market Report by Nanomarkets
For more information on this source please visit NanoMarkets