8 September 2011

Imec partners with Solliance on thin-film PV R&D

In hall B4G booth C11 at the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition (EU PVSEC 2011) in Hamburg, Germany this week (5–8 September), nanoelectronics research institute Imec of Leuven, Belgium announced that it is to be a full partner of Solliance of Eindhoven, The Netherlands and will integrate its thin-film photovoltaic (PV) R&D efforts with the alliance. With Imec as a partner, Solliance aims to become an R&D cluster for thin-film solar energy technology.

Existing alliance partners include ECN (the energy research institute of The Netherlands), TNO (the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research in Delft), the Holst Center in Eindhoven (a joint research initiative of Imec and TNO) and TU/e (Eindhoven University of Technology). Solliance is supported by the Dutch province of North Brabant, which has dedicated €28m to fund a large shared laboratory in Eindhoven (complementing the partner’s labs, which are also available to the other partners).

Solliance works in close cooperation with industry, both to fulfill its short-term needs and on promising programs of mid- and long-term research. It focuses on three main thin-film technologies: thin-film silicon, copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), and organic photovoltaics (OPV). For these principal themes, Solliance will collaborate with industry at its facilities in Eindhoven as well as at Imec’s facilities in Leuven. Solliance also concentrates on generic technologies vital to the thin-film PV industry, including testing, characterization and monitoring, laser technologies, transparent conductive layers, monolithic interconnection, thin-film deposition techniques, roll-to-roll processing, and in-line monitoring.

“The joining of forces in Solliance creates focus and critical mass, needed to be a top level player in the world of thin-film PV,” says Imec’s president & CEO Luc Van den hove. “Strengthened by Imec as the fifth member, our research now stretches across the entire field, from fundamentals of materials science to sophisticated production technologies,” adds Solliance’s managing director Hein Willems. As well as specializing in nanoelectronics, Imec also has research teams with expertise in CIGS and OPV. It will now continue this thin-film R&D within the Solliance collaboration.

Solliance’s aim is to strengthen the position of the Eindhoven–Leuven–Aachen triangle (the ELAT region) as a world player in thin-film PV. It is now creating synergy among more than 250 researchers with this common goal. Solliance aims to realize this ambition by the joint use of infrastructure, the alignment of research programs, and close cooperation with the solar business community.

Tags: Thin-film PV

Visit: www.imec.be

Visit: www.solliance.eu