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Date Announced: 01 Feb 2011
New organic chemical from Ossila is designed to improve plastic cell performance.
Sheffield, UK, 1st February 2011. UK-based start-up company Ossila Limited has brought low-cost renewable-energy a step closer by bringing to market a new material specially designed for use in plastic solar cells. The new material, PCDTBT, will help improve the efficiency, lifetime and manufacturability of plastic solar cells.
Ultimately, plastic solar cells (also called organic photovoltaics) have the potential to provide solar electricity much more cheaply than silicon-based technologies. This is due to their ability to be printed using techniques more familiar to the food packaging industry than the semiconductor industry. Ultra-high volume, low cost production would provide thin, lightweight and flexible solar cells capable of producing electricity more cheaply than by burning fossil fuels.
However, for plastic solar cells to make it from the lab to mass production they must overcome their current drawbacks of efficiency, lifetime and manufacturability. Numerous research groups in the UK and around the world are working to overcome these obstacles, but in many cases have been hampered by a lack of next-generation materials to work with.
“Until now, the most common material used in plastic solar cells is a polythiophene based material – P3HT – which has the drawback of being unstable in air, limited in efficiency and hard to turn into devices. Despite this, P3HT is still widely used as it is one of the few materials available commercially off-the-shelf,” stated Dr James Kingsley of Ossila Limited.
“Most researchers have not had access to any improved materials in over five years so it is a great step forward to be able to supply the research community as a whole with PCDTBT to accelerate the development of the next generation of plastic solar cells.”
PCDTBT is a highly specialised type of plastic which is both semiconducting and an efficient absorber of light. It has significantly increased performance compared to P3HT and is stable under ambient conditions. PCDTBT also has higher manufacturability due to its ability to be dried quickly – an important consideration for fast moving production lines.
PCDTBT is in stock now for immediate delivery to academic and industrial researchers in the UK and around Europe.
Source: Ossila
E-mail: J.Kingsley@ossila.com
Web Site: www.ossila.com
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