Injection Molding Plastic Solar Cells

While organic photovoltaics are accessing specific application sectors taking advantage of their unique properties, it is important to identify as many differentiators as possible to expand the market penetration and consolidation of this technology. In this work, for the first time, the large-scale fabrication of organic photovoltaic modules embedded into structural plastic parts through industrial injection molding is demonstrated. Thermoplastic polyurethane is chosen as the injected material to show that this additional processing step can yield flexible, lightweight photovoltaic modules with enhanced device robustness and virtually unchanged performance. The critical optomechanical and physico-chemical material properties, as well as the plastic processing parameters to enable in-mold plastic solar cells with improved performance and stability, are discussed and provided with perspective. Organic photovoltaic modules embedded into plastic parts through high throughput injection molding are demonstrated here for the first time. The modules injected with thermoplastic polyurethane show enhanced mechanical stability while keeping a high flexibility, with neglectable efficiency losses and a remarkable process yield close to 90%.image