Solarmer's Materials Development team, led by Dr. Jianhui Hou, made the polymers used for both record breaking devices. "We're extremely pleased with the progress we're making and excited about what's yet to come," says Dr. Hou. "These achievements are more evidence that Solarmer's portfolio of polymers is the strongest and most diverse in the industry."
Traditional silicon-based solar panels currently dominate the solar market, although the commercial success of silicon-based solar panels is limited due to the high costs of silicon and difficulties associated with manufacturing silicon-based solar panels, such as the fact that it costs around 10 times as much to generate electricity using silicon solar modules than if conventional fossil fuels are used. Plastic solar panel technology addresses the cost issue, since it employs a much cheaper raw material – plastic – which due to its extraordinary light absorption capability also means that the active layer is extremely thin - only a few tenth of micrometer thick, i.e. less than 1/1000 of silicon cell; reducing costs still further.
Very low cost printing techniques can also be used to manufacture plastic solar cells which, combined with the cheaper raw material costs, gives a much lower cost of equivalent energy (only ~10 - 20% that of silicon technology). Plastic solar technology also enables much lighter and more flexible modules to be manufactured, which can be used for many applications where conventional silicon-based technology is not feasible. The first major applications for this technology will likely be portable digital electronic devices (such as cell phones and PDAs) and smart fabrics (such as tents and solar bags). Building-integrated PV, in the form of power windows, will soon follow.
"Solarmer has made great progress developing plastic solar panels, but we could not have done it without our academic partners, University of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles," says Woolas Hsieh, Founder and President of Solarmer Energy, Inc. "I'm glad and proud we're advancing plastic solar technology towards commercial success."
Solarmer will exhibit the record-breaking plastic solar panel at Intersolar North America 2009 in San Francisco (US) between 14-16 July. Demonstrations will include a solar messenger bag, GPS navigation system, and cell phones.
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