Cheap Active Materials for Photovoltaics using Flow Reactor (CAMPFiRe)

与传统的硅技术相比，印刷太阳能电池提供了大大降低制造成本的前景。由于印刷设备的制造成本极低，生产成本主要由构成材料的成本决定。高达一半的成本来自于用于将光转换为电能的高度设计的聚合物半导体。因此，降低这些活性聚合物的成本是成功商业化的关键要求。目前的生产方法成本很高，而且不能很好地适应工业所需的大量公斤级产量。这项提议使用了一种基于流动化学的新方法来合成它们，并旨在建立一条中试生产线，每天能够以比目前方法低得多的成本生产1公斤高质量的产品。反应堆合成的聚合物将被配制成油墨，并用于低成本有机太阳能组件的印刷制造。

Printed solar cells offer the prospect for greatly reduced manufacturing costs compared to conventional silicon technology. Since fabrication costs for printed devices are extremely low, the production costs are dominated by the cost of the constituent materials. Up to half these costs are from the highly-engineered polymer-based semiconductors used to convert light to electricity. Reducing the cost of these active polymers is therefore a critical requirement for successful commercialisation. Current production methods are costly and do not scale well to the large kg-level quantities required by industry. This proposal uses a new approach to their synthesis based on flow chemistry, and aims to build a pilot production line capable of making up to 1 kg of high quality product per day at much lower cost than current methods. The reactor-synthesised polymers will be formulated into inks and used for the print fabrication of low cost organic solar modules.