German PV equipment company Coatema Coating Machinery says its roll-to-roll processing solutions extend from laboratory or pilot to production scale.
Supplier of production equipment Coatema Coating machines has launched roll-to-roll product lines for flexible organic, perovskite and dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) technologies.
The German company’s products support work path widths up to 1,000 mm, as well as a smaller tool for sheet-to-sheet setups.
The largest in this line of PV roll-to-roll products is Click&Coat, a model with working widths of 300 mm, 500 mm and 1,000 mm. It is designed to be customized with more than 30 different process modules, including dryer, laminator, laser process, cutting and quality control equipment.
More than 20 modules are available for coating alone, including gravure printing, squeegee coating, slot die coating, rotary screen, curtain coating and screen printing. As for drying, the company offers further choices such as hot air, infrared, UV cross-linking and jet drying.
The equipment is in use at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia, said Thomas Kolbusch, Coatema’s head of marketing and technology. Another example is Organic Electronics Technologies (OET) in Greece, where the OPV manufacturer develops solutions for the agricultural, automotive and building materials markets.
OET is participating in a European Union project known as Flex2Energy, which aims to integrate inline laser writing and quality control systems within the roll-to-roll process, for use in an automated module assembly line built by the Spanish machinery company Mondragon Assembly.
Other PV industry customers are in Brazil, North America and Europe. “We see perovskite and organic PV manufacturers starting to make products for battery-free Internet-of-things applications,” Kolbusch said. pv magazine
Looking ahead, Kolbusch sees market opportunities in the agrivoltaic sector. “In Greece, Spain and Germany, there is interest from government agencies in greenhouse applications because of the space-saving advantage and the potential to produce food and energy with the same infrastructure. There is huge potential to add large volumes of solar energy capacity in areas where there are many greenhouses,” he said.
Flexible PV has properties that give it a competitive advantage over conventional PV for use in greenhouses. “It’s lighter, cheaper, easier to install and keep clean. It also produces electricity for more hours per day and starts and stops later than conventional solar,” Kolbusch said.
Two smaller roll-to-roll systems are also available from Coatema: the Easycoater for sheet-on-sheet printing in standard formats A4 and A0, and the Smartcoater with web widths up to 300 mm, suitable for laboratory or small pilot production.
Founded in 1974, Coatema designs and manufactures sheet-to-sheet and roll-to-roll equipment for coating, printing and laminating. It has products for battery production, solar energy, medical devices, fuel cells, green hydrogen and printed electronics.
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