American solar innovation company Energy Materials Corporation (EMC) signed a joint development agreement (JDA) with Corning Inc. Working together, the companies are focused on bringing low-cost, high-performance perovskite solar photovoltaic panels and products to the energy industry.
The JDA focuses both companies’ respective industry leading capabilities using Corning’s flexible Willow Glass as the printing substrate in EMC’s proprietary (patents pending) printing process.
Dr. Stephan DeLuca, EMC’s CEO, said, “Today’s solar panels require high efficiencies and long life. Corning Willow Glass greatly expands the process window for manufacturing high-performance perovskite solar modules using high-speed, roll-to-roll printing, while providing an encapsulation barrier that improves product life. We are excited to be working on an exclusive basis with the world’s leading innovator of functional glass products.”
“Roll-to-roll processable flexible Willow Glass is a uniquely tailored substrate for printed perovskite-based photovoltaic panels because of thermo-mechanical stability, optical clarity, surface quality, and excellent barrier property,” said Dr. Dipak Q. Chowdhury, division vice president and technology executive, Corning Technology Center Korea. “The combination of high-throughput R2R process, and the superior material properties of Corning Willow Glass enables high-speed and high-performance photovoltaic cell manufacturing.”
News item from EMC
Solarman says
Interesting: ““Roll-to-roll processable flexible Willow Glass is a uniquely tailored substrate for printed perovskite-based photovoltaic panels because of thermo-mechanical stability, optical clarity, surface quality, and excellent barrier property,” said Dr. Dipak Q. Chowdhury, division vice president and technology executive, Corning Technology Center Korea. “The combination of high-throughput R2R process, and the superior material properties of Corning Willow Glass enables high-speed and high-performance photovoltaic cell manufacturing.””
The roll to roll technology was one of the great claims of former nanosolar. Apparently the company couldn’t get their “solar nano-ink” to bond well with their thin metal back plane and the manufactured product did not produce output like the R&D modules created in the lab. A 12 to 14% CIGS panel was all they could manage. Nanosolar filed for bankruptcy and quietly faded away. Now if one could spray several coats of particular perovskite chemistries onto this Corning Willow Glass, then it might be possible to create a “stacked” cell with perovskites that would be tuned for different band gaps in the light spectrum. Can it finally be possible to print multi-celled solar PV cells that would harvest more of the light spectrum available daily? Grabbing portions of the light spectrum and perhaps leaning heavily on the infrared spectrum, one might create the albedo array that could actually capture a small percentage of re-radiated power from the ground to the sky each night. No more, solar PV doesn’t make power when the clouds come in or the sun goes down.