Fraunhofer ISE confirms Heliatek's organic photovoltaic test cell achieves 9.8% conversion efficiency

Fraunhofer ISE CalLab confirmed that Heliatek's 1.1cm² organic tandem photovoltaic test cell conversion efficiency reached 9.8%, the cell is manufactured by a low temperature deposition process. The company's internal measurements show that scaling up the record-breaking cell to panels with a size >120 produces an efficiency of more than 9% within the effective module area. Heliatek pointed out that the new record is the third time, and it is still valid in OPV systems.

Martin Pfeiffer, co-founder and CTO of Heliatek, said: "Heliatek is the only solar photovoltaic company focusing on the low-temperature deposition process of small molecules, which has been widely recognized and used in the organic LED (OLED) market. Heliatek develops and synthesizes molecules in-house to capture sunlight into photovoltaic cells and convert it into electricity. Heliatek's organic photovoltaic cells have already reached the conversion efficiency level of traditional amorphous silicon photovoltaic cells."

Heliatek intends to gradually integrate the manufacturing process after production starts in the second half of 2012. The company said the record efficiency result is the result of strong support from project research and development funds provided by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Freistaat Sachsen under project number 71070.