Description

The Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC) (www.irec.cat) was created on July 2008, and began its activities in January 2009. It is composed by 120 employees. Its mission is to become a centre of excellence and an international benchmark organization in the energy sector, through research, technology development and innovation. The ultimate goal of its research activity is to contribute to the sustainable development of society and greater corporate competitiveness. Bearing in mind the principles that motivated the Institute’s creation, IREC has established a framework of reference based on scientific research, technology development and innovation.

The group involved in Solar-Win at IREC is the Solar Energy Materials & Systems (SEMS) Group. The SEMS group has a strong background and expertise in the advanced characterization of processes for chalcogenide based thin film photovoltaic technologies as CIGS, with a significant emphasis in the development of non-destructive optical techniques for quality assessment and process monitoring. This includes a relevant activity in the group in the development of methodologies based on Raman scattering and Photoluminescence (PL) techniques for the in-line monitoring of CIGS based processes. Relevant experience in this field include the development and validation at industrial level of multi-wavelength excitation Raman/PL methodologies for the in-line quantitative assessment of the absorber composition, presence of secondary phases and thickness uniformity of the buffer/window layers in a CIGS PV pilot line, that was developed in the frame of the SCALENANO.

Role in the project

IREC will lead the development and optimisation of multisensor tool and the methodologies for the real time characterization and sorting of laminated glass. IREC will be involved in following tasks in collaboration:
1. Advanced PVB laminated glasses characterization (in collaboration with NTUA and POLITO).
2. Developing of fast real time intelligent data processing algorithms based in the implementation of AI self-learning methods (in collaboration with LENZ).
3. Development and integration of full operative multisensor tool prototype (in collaboration with LENZ).
4. Testing of multisensor tool in industrial real environment at DEMO sites (in collaboration with LENZ, and INM).