On February 1st, 2012 Polyera Corporation (Skokie, Illinois, U.S.) announced that it has achieved a world record conversion efficiency of 9.1% with a polymer/fullerene organic photovoltaic (OPV) cell.

The company's record-setting cell is based on an inverted bulk heterojunction architecture using Polyera's ActivInk PV 2000 semiconductor material. Newport Corporation's (Irvine, California, U.S.) PV Cell Lab certified the record efficiency.

"We have concentrated our [solar] work on the chemistry of these materials and found a new way to design and combine the active layer building blocks to maximize certain optical and electrical properties," says Polyera Founder and Chief Technology Officer Antonio Facchetti. "These latest results bring us a significant step closer to enabling true commercialization."

Design to allow for low-cost manufacturing

Polyera states that the high efficiency of its ActivInk in an inverted architecture represents a major breakthrough in the development of OPV technology, and that this design will allow for the large-scale manufacture of low-cost, lightweight, flexible, semi-transparent OPV modules.

The company also identifies other benefits of the inverted architecture, including ease of manufacture and the extension of useful lifespans.

Finally, Polyera notes that its materials can be processed at low enough temperatures to be compatible with a wide range of simple printing processes and common, inexpensive plastic substrates.

The company also states that it will launch a series of OPV active-layer inks under the trade name ActInk PV.

2012-02-03| Courtesy: Polyera | solarserver.com © Heindl Server GmbH

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