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On 8 September 2011 Nuon announced the pilot plant would be closed down since no investor for production expansion could be found. However, on 7 May 2012 Nuon announced that Helianthos has been sold to HyET Solar.
The process uses a temporary substrate on which flexible thin-film solar cells are deposited. The use of the temporary substrate allows relatively high processing temperatures while using (semi-)continuous roll-to-roll (or reel-to-reel) production processes and cost-efficient, abundantly available materials.
The active layers of such solar cells comprise a transparent conductive oxide layer ( TCO), an active absorbent layer (e.g. thin-film silicon), and a back contact layer (e.g. a reflective metal layer).
The key steps in the process sequence are:
Using this process, flexible photovoltaic (PV) laminates are fabricated that can substantially reduce the per- kilowatt hour costs of solar electricity. Further, the resulting photovoltaic laminates are lightweight, rugged and offer certain freedoms of design.
PV laminates have the potential to be used for a range of applications, including: