Could 'printed' organic solar panels be the future of the industry?

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Today we bring you news of a promising new design opportunity that could revolutionise the future of solar panel production. We hope you’re as excited as we are!

At present, figures show that around 90% of all solar panels across the world are manufactured using crystalline silicon, a material which has been established for decades. Research suggests that they tend to convert between 15% and 25% of the sunlight they receive into electricity. The current options, while offering many benefits, tend to weigh anywhere from 20 to 30kgs per square metre, making them a significant undertaking to install safely onto their usual placement on building roofs. 

While these silicon-based solar panels are pretty much standard across the world at present, recent supports suggest that a new form of ‘organic plastic’ solar panels could soon offer a much lighter and more flexible option that could be effectively ‘printed’ onto buildings, or even placed in windows or on vehicles.


This would offer a range of different potential benefits, with Dr. Francesca Fassioli, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University, explaining: “Their manufacture process has the potential to be cheaper, they are lightweight, offer flexibility in their architecture and in principle they can be more environmentally friendly.”

One immediately noticeable difference is that these new plastic solar panels would weigh around 500g per square metre— which is over 40 times lighter than previous silicon options! 

This means that these plastic panels could be attached in a variety of locations that cannot safely support existing solar panel options, whether on smaller structures, or on the fronts of many buildings. In addition to being much lighter, these new organic solar panels would also be much thinner than silicon solar cells, saving on materials. This would, in theory, make organic plastic solar cells easier and more environmentally-friendly to manufacture.


Damien Hau, who is Research, Development & Innovation Manager at Armor, a French engineering company, stated. "The main difference between silicon technologies and OPV is that we are able to print it or coat it onto something as a thin film. With organic PV panels being a newer technology and smaller industry at present, they currently have the disadvantage of lower efficiencies and higher production costs. These are the two issues that our new project BOOSTER is working to solve,"

BOOSTER is a new €6 million research project that Armor is currently leading. Silicon panels are often able to generate 150 to 200 watts per square metre, while currently these new organic panels only generate 40 watts per square metre. BOOSTER is looking to increase their capabilities to more than 150 watts, while furthering lowering the production costs of these plastic solar panels.



These reports have certainly sparked our interest. Obviously a lot will depend on whether or not projects like BOOSTER can improve the solar generation capabilities of these new types of panels, but if they manage that, then they could certainly offer a fascinating rival to silicon panels in the future.


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