Additive manufacturing of indoor power generating devices (Phase I)

卡尔加里大学功能材料和先进涂料实验室由Gregory Welch教授(化学系)领导，开发了一种新的材料系统和处理平台，可以提供灵活、轻便和半透明的光伏(PV)电池。光伏电池由有机材料和来自石化产品的染料制成，采用卷对卷印刷方法制造，使设备的成本极低(每瓦数美分)，并允许在艾伯塔省进行本地化制造。与Innovate Calgary合作，这项技术受到3项已颁发专利和2项临时专利的保护。第一个使用点是室内光回收，光伏电池与物联网传感器集成，使用LED发光为传感器供电-这是一个价值数十亿美元的新兴行业，我们的目标是成为加拿大第一家为这一应用生产光伏电池的中小企业。加拿大的合作伙伴可以包括NRC、印刷和图形交流研究所以及Brilliant Matters。技术是在TRL4开发的全印刷光伏原型，并在实验室环境下对其性能和稳定性进行评估。要求提供资金以资助HQP扩大这项技术(材料和电池)的规模，用于电路集成和现场测试，并进一步提高光伏性能。该项目的成功将导致HQP领先的初创公司，预计在3年内推出商业产品。两名HQP将接受直接培训。持续投资和收入的长期目标将包括使用我们的专有方法开发用于温室应用的太阳能光伏窗口和用于远程发电的可卷曲光伏板。

The Functional Materials and Advanced Coatings Laboratory at the University of Calgary run by Professor Gregory Welch (Department of Chemistry) has developed a new materials system and processing platform to deliver flexible, lightweight, and semitransparent photovoltaic (PV) cells. The PV cells are constructed from organic materials and dyes derived from petrochemicals and are fabricated using roll-to-roll printing methods rendering the devices ultra low-cost (cents per watt) and allowing for localized manufacturing here in Alberta. Working with Innovate Calgary the technology is protected by 3 issued patents and 2 provisional patents. First point of use is for indoor light recycling where the PV cells are integrated with IoT sensors to use LED light emission to power the sensors - this is an emerging billion dollar industry and we aim to be the first SME in Canada producing PV cells for this application. Canadian partners can include the NRC, Institute for Printing and Graphics Communication, and Brilliant Matters. Technology is at TRL4 with fully printed PV prototypes developed and evaluated for performance and stability in a laboratory setting. Funding is requested to fund HQP to scale this technology (materials and cells) for circuit integration and on-site testing and further increase PV performance. Success of this project will lead to a HQP lead start-up company with commercial products expected within 3-years. Two HQP will be directly trained. Long-term objectives with continued investment and revenue will involve using our proprietary methods to develop solar PV windows for greenhouseapplications and rollable PV sheets for remote power generation.