Solar Press And FOM Technologies Announce Equipment Distribution Agreement

Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) technology developer Solar Press has entered into a distribution agreement with specialist equipment company FOM Technologies for the sale of its unique, high performance fabrication and test equipment for functional materials research.

Solar Press has developed a range of specialist fabrication and test equipment in-house to accelerate its core business in the development of OPV process technology solutions. Given the flexibility and superior performance of the equipment and its applicability to research in a wide range of functional materials, Solar Press has decided to make this equipment available to companies, academics and research establishments to meet their own research goals more efficiently.

Equipment to be offered includes the Solar Press Bench-Top Coating System (BTC01) for coating and drying onto flexible and rigid substrates, and the automated OPV Testing Carousel MGR01 for rapid multiple device testing. The BTC01 is a compact yet versatile system that replicates the coating (e.g. slot die) and drying (e.g. hot air impingement) techniques applied in large scale roll-to-roll coating manufacturing. The availability of this range of equipment enables researchers to explore the transition from small lab-scale fabrication processes such as spin coating and hot plate drying, to continuous industrially-relevant coating methodologies.

A pipeline of further products is to be launched as part of this agreement, including unique OPV device stability and ink formulation test systems, in-line roll-to-roll inspection systems as well as a powerful database and analysis software package for storing, exploring, analyzing and sharing OPV fabrication and characterization data. It will also facilitate the management of laboratory devices.

The Solar Press products complement FOM Technologies’ existing flexible substrate coating and characterization equipment, providing a wide range of solutions for the small to the largest research laboratories.

“FOM Technologies are focused on selling specialist equipment into the functional materials research sector, and have established strong contacts in this community. They are therefore the ideal distribution partner for Solar Press’ specialist fabrication and test equipment,” said Dr Chris Harris, CEO of Solar Press.

Director of FOM Technologies, Torben Nielsen, explains: “Partnering with leading OPV developer Solar Press allows our company to support world wide effort in functional material research with quality R&D equipment. This supports the commercial breakthrough of research by offering R&D equipment developed by scientists for scientists”.

FOM Technologies will be participating at the LOPE-C 2013 exhibition in Munich from 11th June, presenting new products.