Thin Film and Organic PV

New Applications for Solar Energy

Publication Date	March 2006
Publisher	NanoMarkets
Product Type	Report
Pages
ISBN Number	not applicable
Product Code	NAN00015

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£565.00
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Summary

Due to the Nature of this Report the Nubmer of pages is Not Available

Solar panels based on the photovoltaic effect have been in use since the 1970s and have primarily been built from crystalline silicon using technologies very close to those used in the semiconductor industry. The highest efficiencies have been achieved with single crystal silicon cells, although these are hard to make. Polycrystalline silicon cells are less expensive to manufacture but offer lower efficiencies than the single-crystalline approach.

Although the entire PV panel market now generates several billion dollars in worldwide revenue, this figure represents a very small proportion of total energy generated. In spite of the fact that the input to PV cells is sunlight and therefore free, PV has proved a very expensive technology to implement, because of high upfront costs and the fact that there is wide hour-to-hour and day-to-day variations in power generated, which means that some kind of battery storage is needed. Finally, the peak energy conversion efficiency of most solar panels is quite low, which means that a lot of panels must be deployed, and that takes up a lot of real estate.

This report examines and quantifies the emerging market for thin film/flexible photovoltaic technology. It examines the virtues and disadvantages or rival research programs, such as silicon on metal, CIGS on metal and organic PV and compares the various strategies now being employed to create new PV products for the mobile computer and communications, building materials, outdoor power, emergency power and other sectors.

The report provides detailed forecasts of PV shipments broken out by technology type and application. It also discusses how far this new type of photovoltaics can eat into traditional photovoltaics markets.

The key objective of this report is to quantify and forecast the business opportunities in TF and organic PV over an eight-year period and to analyze the strategies of the firms that are pursuing or planning to pursue them.

Content

Executive Summary
- E.1 Background to Thin Film PV
- E.2 Materials and Production Platforms for TF PV
- E.2.1 New Directions for Production: The Role of Printing
- E.3 Applications Thin Film and Organic PV: Key Performance Criteria
- E.4 Relationship to Other Thin-Film and Organic Electronics Products
- E.5 Firms to Watch
- E.6 Summary of Forecasts
Chapter One: Introduction
- 1.1 Background to Report
- 1.2 Objectives and Scope of this Report
- 1.3 Methodology of this Report
- 1.4 Plan of this Report
Chapter Two: Enabling Technologies and Materials
- 2.1 Introduction
- 2.2 Silicon Approaches: Innovalight, Iowa Thin Film, Sanyo and Uni-Solar
- 2.3 CIS/CIGS Approaches: DayStar, Global Solar Energy, MiaSole, Heliovolt, Honda and Shell Solar
- 2.4 Polymers and Hybrid Organic/Inorganic: Konarka and Nanosolar
- 2.5 Small Molecules: Global Photonic Energy
- 2.6 CdTe: First Solar
- 2.7 "Third Generation," Nano-Enabled Photovoltaics and GaAs
Chapter Three: Applications and Markets
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2 Large Projects
- 3.3 Integrated Building Products
- 3.4 Consumer Electronics
- 3.5 Military and Emergency Applications
- 3.6 Other Applications: The Promise of Disposable Electronics
Chapter Four: Eight-Year Forecasts
- 4.1 Eight-Year Forecasts of Thin Film Electronics Technology
- 4.2 A Justification for Forecasting and Sources of Error
- 4.3 Forecasts
Acronyms and Abbreviations Used in this Report
About the Author
List of Exhibits
- Exhibit E-1: Claimed Advantages of Thin Film Approaches
- Exhibit E-2: Selected Firms in the Thin-Film PV Market
- Table E-3: Summary of Organic/PV Markets ($ Millions)
- Exhibit 4-1: TF Photovoltaic Markets: By Production Technology ($ Millions)
- Exhibit 4-2: TF Photovoltaic Markets: By Materials ($ Millions)