Paul Sullivan¹, John Naylor¹, Sven Krusche^2
1Kurt J. Lesker Company, Jefferson Hills, PA
²Heliatek GmbH, Dresden, Germany
Heliatek GmbH (Dresden, DE) is a technology leader in organic photovoltaics (OPVs), having expanded from a small university spin-off in 2006 to a mass manufacturer of innovative solar films with a current annual factory capacity of >2 M m². With a cell technology based around vacuum evaporation of small organic molecules, and a full value chain approach (all the way from chemistry, synthesis and stack design through to volume roll-to-roll production development), they make an ideal case study to highlight the evolution of a vacuum deposition process from small-scale R&D systems to large-area R2R manufacturing.
This presentation will introduce Heliatek, their technology and capabilities, and give examples of the deployment of their solar films in real-world environments. The benefits of vacuum evaporation in producing controllable, repeatable multilayer stacks will be discussed, with emphasis on the role of small-scale R&D tools in the overall development process.