Solar TAP Infrastructure –
Experience Helmholtz.

The Solar TAP platform combines some of the world’s leading research infrastructures to advance, simulate, and demonstrate emerging photovoltaic technologies. This unique platform offers flexible use of state-of-the-art facilities.

At the core of Solar TAP are nine advanced material and technology research infrastructures joining their research capabilities in order to develop multi-benefit PV solutions. This innovative setup allows for the targeted development and refinement of PV technologies.

Industry partners can interact with Solar TAP as if it were a single, cohesive laboratory. This integrated approach ensures efficient collaboration, rapid prototyping, and accelerated innovation in PV technology development. With Solar TAP, the journey from concept to market-ready technology is streamlined and optimized, driving the future of sustainable energy solutions.

At the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, a living lab has been constructed 2021 with building integrated photovoltaics in colored panels on three of the four sides (South, West and North), with a total nominal power around 50 kW. For research purposes, the ventilated curtain wall facades, with varying insulation situations behind the PV modules, are extensively monitored 24/7 for building specific parameters such as temperature and air flow, next to the more usual electrical, optical and meteorological data. For a new ensemble of research buildings, on the same location, a first building has been designed by the prize-winning architects and is planned for delivery in 2025. Part of this building will be a number of metal façade elements, which are very well suited for and planned as testing areas for flexible solar modules. This part of the living lab will offer a perfect testing area for the Solar TAP products and will allow for a one-to-one comparison to more traditional PV elements but will also highlight the additional value that Solar TAP´s flexible PV technology can offer.
The emergence of hybrid organic–inorganic metal halide perovskite semiconductors over the past decade opened a window of opportunity for next generation perovskite thin-film photovoltaics. It affords a novel opportunity to advance the power conversion efficiency of the market-dominating photovoltaic technologies based on crystalline Si or CIGS thin film photovoltaics in so-called tandem solar cells. Advancing the technological readiness of tandem photovoltaics demands research and innovation in our core areas of expertise: novel perovskite semiconductors, scalable processes to manufacture perovskite thin-films, perovskite-based tandem solar cells, nanophotonic light management structures, and energy yield modelling. The core lab enables the processing of high efficiency perovskite solar cells and perovskite-based tandem solar cells.
Core Lab Perovskite PV at KIT
@ KIT/Breig
FZJ operates within HI ERN several technology acceleration platforms (TAP) to automate synthesis, film formation, device manufacturing and characterization. These lines make it possible to optimize multiple parameters simultaneously and support researchers in the materials discovery process from materials inception to device application. The “Autonomous Materials and Device Application Platform” (AMANDA) is a custom software backbone with the capability of controlling multiple Materials Accelerations Platforms. The software allows for a high degree of automation to accelerate research while keeping the lab processes flexible. Data is collected at all stages of the process for a comprehensive and complete documentation. All data sets are interlinked and retrievable to allow systematic analyses across experiments. Processing is conducted automatically on several material acceleration platforms (MAPs) which can transport substrates, load spincoaters, perform spincoating, pattern structures and anneal the films sequentially on up to 96 substrates in parallel with variable processing parameters. All processes may be run in inert conditions. An attached evaporator, automated jV-characterization and an integrated accelerated stability testing station make it possible to finish and completely characterize photovoltaic devices made with novel materials.
Autonomous Materials and Device Application Platform (AMANDA) @HI ERN/Kurt Fuchs
The Helmholtz Innovation Lab HySPRINT was initiated in 2016 through financial support from the Helmholtz Initiative and Networking Fund. HySPRINT provides a cooperation platform for industry at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin with a focus on (opto)electronic devices at an early technological stage of development. The laboratory infrastructure located in the Berlin-Adlershof Technology Park provides industrial partners access to relevant technological processes and characterization methods, in particular for halide perovskite - silicon multi-junction PV technology. The success of the environment and infrastructure that was established is evident from the achievement of world-record tandem solar cells and start-ups. The HySPRINT Laboratory has facilities to optimize device layer stacks through high-throughput manufacturing and assessment of test-devices using scalable manufacturing methods. Complementary to the materials screening abilities of AMANDA, HySPRINT will offer Solar TAP partners high-throughput ink and process optimization by combinatorial inkjet printing (IJP) and slot-die coating (SDC). For the combinatorial slot-die coating and process monitoring, an automized setup with differential ink feed and automatable in-line process monitoring will be designed and purchased. These capabilities will be complemented with the provision and development of in-line process monitoring tools in collaboration with industrial partners.
HySPRINT Innovation Lab
@ HZB/Dera
Thin-film photovoltaic technologies and products are developed at PVcomB together with industry. The transfer of technology and knowledge takes place in research projects with industrial partners and through the training of highly qualified specialists.
PVComB Lab
@ HZB/Dera
The “Solar Factory of the Future” (SFF) develops printing, coating, and patterning processes for high-throughput (HT) manufacturing of fully solution processed electronics, particularly of emerging photovoltaics (e-PV), utilizing its unique infrastructure, comprising roll-to-roll coating/printing, laser patterning, and encapsulation. The unique expertise of the SFF in the field of upscaling production processes of printed PV to a commercially relevant level originates from the combination of rational methods of ink formulation with smart coating and patterning procedures. As one of few research institutions worldwide, SFF is set up to provide module batch sizes up to the 100 m2 regime and has the competence to scale the output of its R2R processing line to the MW level. The combination of scientific expertise and technical competence positions the SFF to bridge the gap between laboratory research and industrial manufacturing regime. The SFF currently holds the efficiency world record for large area organic PV modules.
Solar Factory of the Future
@EnCN/Kurt Fuchs
Solar TAP links existing acceleration platforms for semiconductor materials, photovoltaic devices, module processing, and application development into one technology acceleration platform to boost the development of photovoltaic applications. Automated and interlinked labs focus on multiple stages of technology development and open new possibilities for digitalization and computer-aided design. These design efforts are bundled in the Digital Twin Lab that focuses on developing a virtual representation of the entire scientific and economic value chain: The digital twin.
Digital Twin Lab
@ KIT/FZJ/HI ERN
At the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, a living lab has been constructed 2021 with building integrated photovoltaics in colored panels on three of the four sides (South, West and North), with a total nominal power around 50 kW. For research purposes, the ventilated curtain wall facades, with varying insulation situations behind the PV modules, are extensively monitored 24/7 for building specific parameters such as temperature and air flow, next to the more usual electrical, optical and meteorological data. For a new ensemble of research buildings, on the same location, a first building has been designed by the prize-winning architects and is planned for delivery in 2025. Part of this building will be a number of metal façade elements, which are very well suited for and planned as testing areas for flexible solar modules. This part of the living lab will offer a perfect testing area for the Solar TAP products and will allow for a one-to-one comparison to more traditional PV elements but will also highlight the additional value that Solar TAP´s flexible PV technology can offer.
Living Lab BIPV
@ HZB/Niklas Albinius
The integration of novel PV-technologies will focus on various application cases with high potential. Agri-Horti-PV application development will build on the Agri-Horti-PV test site (Agri-Food-Energy Park -- Agri FEe) established by FZJ: Plant Sciences at Alt-Morschenich in the context of BioökonomieREVIER (a large-scale regional transformation of the lignite-mining region Rheinisches Revier into a model region for sustainable bioeconomy ).
Agri-Food-Energy Parc (Agri FEe)
@ FZJ/Christina Kuchendorf
The Mobility PV Platform will be built up as part of Solar TAP. The aviation platform in plant sciences at FZ Jülich already contains various aircrafts used to carry camera equipment for plant phenotyping analytics. The airships and autonomous gliders of the platform will be used in Solar TAP for light weight printed PV integration. Together with the industrial partners concepts for PV integrated aircrafts with adapted energy management will be developed to demonstrate full electrification of aviation.
Mobility PV Platform
@ KIT/FZJ