Accelerating Emerging PV Technologies

The development of complex functional solar materials poses a multi-objective
optimization problem in a large multi-dimensional parameter space. Solving it requires
reproducible, user-independent laboratory work and intelligent preselection of
experiments. However, experimental materials science is a field where manual
routines are still predominant, although other domains like pharmacy or chemistry
have introduced robotics and automation long before. Human interaction in the
process of data acquisition is seen critical due to incomplete assessment of meta-data
or hidden processing correlations which complex reproducibility. Materials
Acceleration Platforms (MAPs) are regarded as an enabling technology for Data-Driven
Material Science, leading to an increased number of concepts and a dynamic evolution
of MAP lines. In this talk, I will present our approach to laboratory automation in
materials science with a strong focus on fully functional solar devices.

AMANDA (Autonomous Materials and Device Application Platform - www.amanda-
platform.com) was developed as a generic platform for distributed materials research

comprising a self-developed software backbone and several MAPs. However, one
realizes that accelerating a whole technology requires more than accelerated materials
research. It also takes devices and process development to truly accelerate a PV
technology. These are concepts are summarized under Technology Acceleration
Platforms (TAP)
This talk will stepwise introduce the current concepts and technologies to accelerate
solar technologies: from the material to the device and to the process. The outlook will
discuss how these platforms can be made communicative to each other in order to
transform them into autonomously acting TAP with the power to accelerate the
learning curve for a whole solar cell technology.