Organic photovoltaics - energizing perspectives for the coating and converting industry

Organic photovoltaics promises a very low cost production of solar energy by fast roll-to-roll coating and printing processes. Both vacuum coating and solution coating and printing are used to deposit the organic semiconductors and electrode materials. The technology has made significant progress in terms of record efficiencies exceeding 10% and device stability, where recent results justify to envisage that a device lifetime of more than 10 years is possible to achieve even with flexible devices. The technology will be introduced with recent progress and remaining challenges. The technological aspects to be solved to realize the potential of this technology will be addressed as well as where the coating and converting industry can contribute to make it happen.