Can Solar Ink help the EU achieve its green goals?

Solar inks have not been around for very long, but recent advancements in the field of printable solar cells has made them more effective. This article will focus on what has been achieved in the area of solar cells and the recent developments.

Solar Ink

Solar ink, a conductive ink, is capable of printing solar cells on a variety of substrates including plastic, paper and fabric. Solar ink’s greater flexibility offers obvious advantages to consumers and builders.

It is possible to create thin, flexible solar panels. This technology overcomes the limitations associated with fixed solar cells, which, despite their eco-friendliness, are difficult to manufacture and fragile.

By the middle of the century, industry will also be in a situation where materials are no longer available to manufacture traditional solar panels at the level required by 21st Century demand.

In Europe, recent advances have seen the development of solar cells which are both printable as well as rollable. In laboratories, they have been manufactured under conditions in which oxygen and water are removed. This results in solar cells that operate at the same efficiency as conventional solar panels.

This would be very expensive to manufacture in the industry, but printing them on plastic film solves this problem. Researchers from the University of Swansea developed a method for printing perovskite cells on plastic film using carbon ink and slot-die-coating process, a technique commonly used for producing photographic films.

One of the requirements for this been the development of perovskite and semiconductor layers that have thicknesses of 50 – 500 nm within the cell. Years of research also produced a method that does not use highly toxic solvents to produce solar cells.

New solar cells are powered by incident light. The semiconductor layer helps to achieve efficient power conversion by preventing electron re-absorption. Carbon ink is used to extract the charge.

Slot-die printing produces flexible, rollable plastic films with solar cells. The possibility of printing large solar cell areas is now much closer.  But there is still much work to be done, for example, increasing the performance of the perovskite and finding new ways to increase their durability, whether through protective coatings or lamination techniques.

The production of solar ink in general has already proven to be an eco-friendly option, as it can be produced at low temperatures and therefore reduce energy consumption. The technique is also valuable because the demand for renewable solutions will continue to increase, which will translate into more opportunities for the green economy and for industry.

Recent Statistics on European Sales

The European Printing Ink Association, or EuPIA, has recently published their annual statistics for the printing ink industry on the continent. The overall trends show that the volume of inks continues to decline while their value is increasing. Statistics are based on the 26 member companies, which account for 90% of total sales. 

Publication inks include web offset (coldset or heatset), sheetfed offset, publication gravure and overprint varnishes. Packaging inks include flexographic, specialty gravure, radcure and overprint varnishes.

In 2022, sales of publication inks fell by just under 15% to reach 250,000 tons. The volume of packaging inks also fell, but this time only by 4% to 530,000 tons. Scanning the details on a national level, a few salient points and signs emerge.

• Of the big five economies in the west, Italy boasted the strongest annual growth in ink sales at 13.6%, increasing the value of inks to its economy to more than €400 million. Spain placed second with ink sales rising by 10.7% in 2022 to total more than €200 million. The UK and France increased sales by 8.5% and 6.9% respectively to both reach about €260 million. Germany remains the pre-eminent industry and market with sales in excess of €575 million and growing by 7.4%. Italy has the highest value ink industry after Germany.

• From the mid-sized and smaller economies, some of the best performers were the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Sweden, Croatia and Portugal, although none of these have ink sales in excess of €100 million and most have sales fewer than €50 million.

• In Eastern Europe disruption for some brought opportunity for others. Ukrainian ink sales fell by nearly 44% to around €13-14 million while those in neighbouring Belarus rose by 115% to about €12 million. Russian ink sales were seen to fare badly last year, collapsing by 35% to around €110 million. Meanwhile in the regionally prominent Turkish economy, turnover from inks grew by more than 24% to over €275 million. The Turkish ink industry is now Europe’s third-most valuable after Germany and Italy.