The polymer solar cell was envisioned many years ago as a low cost flexible PV technology made using fast printing processes, simple machinery and abundant materials. At the turn of the millennium there was a lot of hope that the vision would become reality and this spawned a massive surge in the scientific literature with ever increasing performance and marvels of processability, yet the polymer solar cell remained elusive and the few examples of available OPV have all been far from representing the vision and promises in terms of cost, abundance and fast processing.
I believe that to be true to the art, the polymer solar cell has to be adherent to the vision and especially it must be made available to anyone interested in it. For this reason my group developed the freeOPV modules that are freely available to anybody with a fundamental, academic or scholar interest. The philosophy and spirit is that it should be free without ties and I encourage students, school children, nerds, gizmos, colleagues, companies etc. to make use of this special offer to study, posses, claim, reverse engineer, copy, and use these OPV modules that have been created to propagate OPV and hopefully enable us to reach the objective of supplying the globe with energy from OPV in the future, OPV that are true to the art and original vision of OPV.
The freeOPV modules are (according to my view) far from the mark when it comes to power conversion efficiency but pretty close when it comes to stability, manufacturing speed, cost and abundance of elements. The aim is thus to supply you with the most recent development and the freeOPV module is thus meant to serve as an available benchmark to everybody and anybody irrespective of their origin or interest. freeOPV is what today can be prepared in huge numbers and large area with consistent performance. freeOPV is to me also an experiment of who is interested, what do the interested person do with it, where does it end up, and how efficiently can it be distributed. The cost of a freeOPV module is very low, in fact shipping is significantly higher in cost than the module itself including all handling and preparation for dispatch. It is my sincere hope that you will help me propagate the polymer solar cell and do feel free to share any results, we have to work together on this and learn from it, I have done the majority of my part and hope that you will take my offer an also honor it with feedback, good or bad, remember I am a scientist and to me any results are of interest regardless of their nature.
So go to this link and claim your freeOPV solar cell module.
Frederik C. Krebs
Comments
Keep in mind that these guys are absorbing the cost of both the cell and the cost to ship it (likely sent as letter via standard mail). Seems logical that they would have lots of universities, schools and individuals wanting samples, and probably manage their orders in batches.
oh I see. I never receive a sample yet neither. :-(
Mike this is were you can ask for a free sample and email for more info.
http://plasticphotovoltaics.org/free-opv/free-opv-order-form.html
@Andrew -- I assume these cells are roll-to-roll printed, so no. If you built a bespoke inkjet system, perhaps, but its still tricky. However, you could just mould these into the wing. Alta solar claims it's possible to use a clear gelcoat as an encapsulate for their cells (not printed), which were compatible with a composite layup process. Also, OPV isn't great for this application, the power output is an order of magnitude lower than GaAs cells.
Could your PV's be printed directly onto a wing mould surface prior to laminating, in the same way high-end composite wings are painted in the mould?
Should be possible to find some specs here.
https://www.coursera.org/course/opv
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ente.201300057/abstract
Anyone have access to the specs?
Paul - This is interesting. I have submitted my order form.
Could you tell me where I might find performance specifications for these cells?
I realise the conversion efficiency is not going to be comparable to conventional crystalline or even amorphic solar cells, but the fact that they are so flexible would perhaps enable a greater proportion of usable wing area (or even fuselage area). Power to weight (including encapsulation and integration) is also a big factor, and I would be interested to know if this is a strong point of these cells (as they seem to have a very tiny substrate).
The roll-to-roll manufacturing process promises super low cost, and the concept of being able to custom design a pair of solar panels to get 100% cover on a pair of wings, then (then send them off to) print them out, is really exciting.