The company’s manufacturing process will allow it to mass-produce flexible components for use in solar devices.
One of Cambrios’ solar devices
In a press release, Armor revealed that it has partnered with Cambrios Technologies Corporation, who produce “silver nanowire-based solutions for the transparent conductor markets”, to develop a “scalable manufacturing process” that allows Armor to “mass produce” organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices that are flexible.
Armor has developed and designed “flexible solar modules” using Cambrios’ ClearOhm silver nanowires as electrodes, with OPV technology a “maturing” market that Armor is looking to enter. One of the barriers to achieving “high volume, appropriate costs and required performance” in the market is indium tin oxide (ITO), the traditional conductor used in such devices, and which is “brittle, expensive and not scalable to very large volumes without huge capital investment”.
The two companies’ partnership however has “successfully achieved” a “cost-effective, scalable” production process for the silver nanowire electrodes, which are “not only highly conductive and transparent” but also enable solar cells that are “flexible, foldable, formed into different shapes and even wrapped around a pillar or building”.
François Barreau, Marketing Manager of Armor Sustainable Energies Division (ASE), commented: “The implementation of transparent, flexible and highly conductive ITO-free electrodes is a high priority for Armor and a major step for the OPV industry. With the recent progress in developing a sustainable, high volume manufacturing process using ClearOhm electrodes, we are making OPV production an industrial reality. We will continue to develop such industrial alliances to support the commercial growth of the OPV market worldwide.”
Rahul Gupta, Senior Director of Business Development at Cambrios, added: “We are thrilled to have achieved such a milestone together with Armor. After successfully gaining traction in the touch sensor market, ClearOhm material is now enabling new high volume applications. Our solution provides benefits that will allow Armor to create differentiated products and introduce a new generation of solar cells.”
The two companies demonstrated the OPV devices constructed using the new production line at IDTechEx’s Printed Electronics USA event, held in Santa Clara, California from 19 to 20 November.