Flexible, Cost-effective and Efficient LED Lighting Panels and Solar Cells

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

New novel transparent barrier foils

The project also had another exciting outcome – the testing, development and scale-up of new manufacturing methods to create transparent barrier foils. Low-cost and high-performance barriers were created that are now being further advanced and commercially developed by Swiss-based consortium partner Flexibles Kreuzlingen.

These types of barriers are required to maximise the lifetime and efficiency of the device, discovered by the project to be a crucial element when ensuring the economic and environmental viability of solar cells.

Overall, by integrating the production of electrodes and barriers, rather than using two separate plastic substrates, the project has demonstrated that manufacturing costs for the production of such devices can be significantly reduced, as well as allowing for thinner and more flexible device designs.

Challenges and next steps

However, despite their great success, the project team has also faced the challenge of producing extremely flat, clean and smooth electrode and barrier foils. Optoelectronic devices feature active layers that measure several hundred nanometres, which means that even miniscule dust particles or slight surface irregularities can affect the device yield, or could result in a shorter lifetime and inconsistent, less effective illumination.

Even with the formal end of the TREASORES project in October 2015, the project partners have been continuing to address these challenges, preparing patents for the technology and moving towards full commercialisation of their novel devices. In total, the project received just over EUR 9 million in EU funding.

Page 2 of 2

• < Previous Page