Winchester, UK - The National Energy Renewable Laboratory (NREL) has verified that the material class within Konarka Technologies' Power Plastic portfolio of flexible organic based photovoltaic (PV) solar cells has demonstrated six percent efficiency performance.

The results were achieved by Dr. Alan Heeger of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and chief scientist at Konarka, under the scope of the Sustainable Development Technology Canada program (SDTC), which provides funding to partners Universite Laval (Quebec), the National Research Council of Canada (Ottawa) and Saint Jean Photochimie (Saint Jean, Quebec) for the development of low cost printable organic solar cells. Konarka is the U.S. industrial solar cell partner.

"Achieving the power conversion efficiency of six percent for this relatively young material class is an important milestone," commented Dr. Alan Heeger. "This progress gives us confidence that we are on a technology pathway toward the vision of high efficiency, low cost 'plastic' solar cells. Increasing the efficiency and performance of organic based photovoltaic (PV) solar cells at this rate is bringing us closer to making solar electricity from photovoltaics cost-competitive with conventional forms of electricity."

Konarka has collaborated with the Universite Laval, the National Research Council of Canada and Saint Jean Photochimie for the past four years, and recently obtained the exclusive license for a new family of photoactive polymers (polycarbazoles - PCZ) originally developed by Professor Mario Leclerc, director of the Macromolecular Science and Engineering Research Center of Universite Laval (CERSIM) and director of the Quebec Center on Functional Materials (CQMF), and jointly developed for solar cell application by the SDTC consortium. Accordingly, Dr. Alan Heeger integrated the material into his cell architecture and has advanced the performance, as verified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).