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Organic (or dye-sensitized) solar cells, together with thin film technologies, are currently considered to be the main candidates to capture the market share from traditional crystalline silicon solar cells. The variety of organic compounds provides an opportunity to meet different demands on the solar cell properties either mechanical and chemical, or optical and electrical, in order to adjust them to the particular needs. Cryscade™ photosensitive organic thin films have been developed
with the aim to increase the power conversion efficiency of organic
photovoltaic devices. The films are produced via an optimized Cascade
Crystallization process from polycyclic organic compounds with conjugated
The films exhibit strongly anisotropic optical absorption. Their conductivity,
anisotropic as well, may be several orders higher comparing to amorphous
organic semiconducting films and reach the values up to 0.1 S/cm. There
is a strong correlation between absorption and photoconductivity of
the films.
Cryscade offers a new inexpensive organic material and a low-cost fabrication process for an organic solar cell. The opportunity to engineer optimal materials with high environmental stability for solar cell manufacturing and to optimize device efficiency to over 50% brings a business opportunity to capture a market share and expand the market itself. Cryscade’s unique patented fabrication technology allows the layers of photovoltaic material to be printed on glass or plastic substrate at room temperature. The main competitive advantages include low cost (~3-4 times less
per square meter than traditional silicon cells), full coverage of the
sun spectrum and direct path to scalable large volume manufacturing.
The latter is an important advantage over competing technologies– thin
films, where high-temperature material deposition and/or vacuum fabrication
processing often prevent successful transition from a lab prototype
to scalable manufacturing. Development process
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-system,
allowing devices to be created with practically unrestricted surface
area. The process involves chemical modification to impart amphiphilic
properties to the molecules, and three steps of ordering during formation
of the crystalline film: 1) stacking of amphiphilic molecules in supramolecules;
2) deposition of a solution of supramolecules onto a substrate; 3) drying/crystallization.
