Final event of the third-party funded project

In Sep­tem­ber 2021, the 4.5‑year third-par­ty fund­ed project “speed­CIGS” came to a suc­cess­ful end with a final event. As part of the BMWi-fund­ed project, a con­sor­tium with part­ners from research and indus­try achieved sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess­es in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process of CIGS solar mod­ules. Among oth­er things, the CIGS process was accel­er­at­ed, which was accom­pa­nied by a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in pro­duc­tion costs and relief from the tense mar­ket sit­u­a­tion in this area.

Background & goal — at the beginning of the project (2016)

A con­sor­tium with part­ners from research and indus­try was able to acquire a project ten­dered by the BMWi. The set goal of the project was to accel­er­ate the man­u­fac­tur­ing process of CIGS solar mod­ules in order to be able to pro­duce more mod­ules per time unit at the same invest­ment costs. This in turn makes the pro­duc­tion of CIGS solar mod­ules sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er. The back­ground of the pur­sued goal was to relieve the tense mar­ket sit­u­a­tion with­in the Ger­man pho­to­volta­ic manufacturers.

Completion of the project

Today, around 4.5 years after the start of the speed­CIGS project fund­ed by the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics, those involved can look back on a suc­cess­ful project; with pleas­ing results. Thanks to the project, sig­nif­i­cant progress has been made in CIGS technology.

The successes of the project

- An accel­er­a­tion of the CIGS process was achieved, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced pro­duc­tion costs.
— The under­stand­ing of the for­ma­tion of so-called “for­eign phas­es”, changes in the crys­tal struc­ture of the CIGS absorber vis­i­ble under the elec­tron micro­scope, was improved.
— The project set two world records relat­ed to the effi­cien­cy of CIGS tan­dem cells.

Due to the pan­dem­ic, the final meet­ing was held vir­tu­al­ly. In addi­tion to the project part­ners, two rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics, Dr. Brock­mann and Dr. Altemhöfer, were also present.  As a “sup­port­ing pro­gram” of the event, a pre­sen­ta­tion by Prof. Dr. M. Haag was very well received. He report­ed on the orga­ni­za­tion of the Wil­helm Büch­n­er Hochschule and was able to empha­size the impor­tant orga­ni­za­tion­al dif­fer­ences to pres­ence universities.

After­wards, a “vir­tu­al get togeth­er” took place. As a replace­ment for the orig­i­nal­ly planned joint din­ner. In a vir­tu­al envi­ron­ment, it was now pos­si­ble to talk to indi­vid­ual project part­ners and — sit­ting at the bar, as it were — to drink a glass of wine togeth­er. This gave the par­tic­i­pants the oppor­tu­ni­ty to look back on the project and the suc­cess­ful past years in a relaxed envi­ron­ment. Prof. Dr. J. Windeln, head of this research project, raised his glass on this occa­sion and reviewed the entire project in a speech.