Creating Solar Panels using Inkjet Technology

Today FUJIFILM’s cartridge-based Dimatix Materials Printer (DMP), Konarka Technologies has demonstrated the world’s-first fabrication of highly efficient solar cells using of inkjet printing technology.

The DMP used for the demonstration is a turnkey, bench-top materials deposition system that uses FUJIFILM’s inkjet technology and Shaped Piezo Silicon MEMS fabrication processes in depositing picoliter-sized droplets of functional fluids on all types of surfaces. By employing single-use cartridges that researchers can fill with their own fluid materials, the DMP system minimizes waste of expensive fluid materials, thereby eliminating the cost and complexity associated with traditional product development and prototyping. The DMP is suitable for prototyping and low-volume manufacturing, and the technology is scalable from research and development to production.

Konarka (which has also developed and is commercializing Power Plastic, a material that converts light to energy) says the demonstration confirms that organic solar cells can be processed with printing technologies with little or no loss compared to “clean room” semiconductor technologies such as spin coating - a process used to apply uniform thin film solar cells to flat base materials. The inkjet technology also had the advantage of being compatible with various base materials and does not require additional patterning.

While the demonstration was the “first-known” according to the Konarka’s release, the attractive notion of printable solar cells is not entirely new. Last year researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology announced the development of an inexpensive solar cell, using a carbon nanotubes complex that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets, and could one day lead to the creation of solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers.

Via Gizmag

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