Heliatek and FHR co-operate on construction of first vacuum coating plant for organic photo­voltaic units (OPV)

Heli­atek GmbH, Dresden, the global leader in the devel­op­ment of organic solar cells, will be build­ing its first pro­duc­tion site in Dresden. Con­struc­tion will be car­ried out in co-oper­a­tion with FHR Anla­gen­bau GmbH, Otten­dorf-Okrilla – an inter­na­tion­ally exper­i­enced man­u­fac­turer of innov­at­ive vacuum pro­cess tech­no­logy.

Heli­atek is pur­su­ing the goal of becom­ing the world’s first man­u­fac­turer of organic, oli­gomer-based solar cells and the sup­plier of the most effi­cient, stable and pro­duct­ive organic solar cells.

“We have found a pro­fes­sional part­ner in FHR,” explains CEO Dr. Andreas Rück­e­mann, “who has the cap­ab­il­ity to sup­port us in our stra­tegic long-term capa­city expan­sion plan and with whom we are able to ensure the imple­ment­a­tion of the organic based PV-mod­ule pro­duc­tion.”

The foil coat­ing sys­tem which has been developed by FHR is a highly integ­rated pro­duc­tion line for organic solar cells with a very small foot­print. For the engin­eers and the tech­no­lo­gies of FHR Anla­gen­bau GmbH, com­bin­ing the com­plex vacuum pro­cess tech­no­logy used for depos­ition­ing organic molecules, the struc­tur­ing of the molecule lay­ers and the lam­in­a­tion of the plastic foil was a real chal­lenge. Man­aging Dir­ector Dr. Rein­hard Fend­ler: “We are very proud of the integ­rat­ive work we have done here and are very happy to have found Heli­atek, an ideal part­ner situ­ated close by, which already has a top pos­i­tion within the OPV industry. Organic photo­vol­taic is a new busi­ness area for FHR and our roll-to-roll sys­tems. Stra­tegic­ally it is very inter­est­ing and has a very prom­ising future.”

Heli­atek and FHR plan to have the new man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­ity set up by mid 2011. The first products to be pro­duced by the new foil coat­ing sys­tem are expec­ted to be avail­able at the start of 2012. The man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­ity will be built at the Heli­atek loc­a­tion in Dresden, close to the A4 high­way and only 15 minutes from the air­port. Heli­atek moved into its ‘new home’ there in May of this year, giv­ing it the space to carry out everything ‘from lab to fab’. The mod­ern hall offers ideal con­di­tions. With a floor space of about 1,700 m², it provides enough room not only for pro­duc­tion but also for the labor­at­or­ies and research units to grow throughout the com­ing years.

Dresden has both an excel­lent infra­struc­ture as well as highly qual­i­fied, exper­i­enced and motiv­ated employ­ees. These are the best pos­sible pre­requis­ites for Heli­atek to pro­duce and sell the high-qual­ity, light, flex­ible and option­ally even semi-trans­par­ent photo­vol­taic mod­ules of the new­est gen­er­a­tion at highly com­pet­it­ive prices.

The con­struc­tion of the first pro­duc­tion site is being sup­por­ted fin­an­cially by the European Union.