The 1st CEE Innovation Grant to adjunct professor Tapio Fabritius
The 1st CEE innovation Grant was granted to Adj. Prof. Tapio Fabritius from the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Oulu for his proposal titled “Solar energy harvesting sticker”. The grant provides one year funding, during which the solar cell technology for distributed electricity production is developed in the Optoelectronics and Measurement Techniques Laboratory under the supervision of Fabritius.
The technology is based on the utilization of liquid processable materials such as polymers and different nanomaterial suspensions in solar cell manufacturing. The proposed approach enables the fabrication of flexible, lightweight and cost effective solar cells and opens new possibilities for solar energy production. Building integrated photovoltaic and autonomously working sensor and measurement systems can be mentioned as interesting examples of possible applications for the developed solar cells.
The aim of this project is to develop and fabricate a flexible, lightweight and cheap solar cell demonstrator and prove the functionality of the proposed concept in practice. At the same time, the commercial potential of the proposed technology will be promoted, to enable generating new business based on this technology.
The Centre for Environment and Energy (CEE) is one of the innovation centres of the Oulu Innovation Alliance. CEE is a knowledge hub creating efficient connections between business expertise, top research; investors and promotes R&D&I projects. The objective of the CEE Grant was to accelerate market-driven research toward commercialization and bridge the gap between basic research and market-ready plans.
