From the beginning, Epishine’s ambition was to change the economics of solar cell manufacturing. The idea was to print solar cells much like newspapers: in large volumes, using continuous rolls, with very little material and a compact manufacturing footprint.
That ambition grew out of Professor Olle Inganäs’ vision. As companies began exploring printed solar cells, he saw an opportunity that went far beyond printing one or two layers. What if every functional layer could be printed? And what if the entire journey from raw materials to finished solar modules could be handled roll-to-roll?
Answering those questions required a fundamentally different approach to both the solar cell and its manufacturing process.
A solar cell is a stack of materials with different functions: absorbing light, directing electrical charges, and collecting the resulting current. Epishine developed printing methods that allow every functional layer in that stack to be printed. At the heart of the approach is its patented Precision Stack Lamination technology. Put simply, the solar cell stack is printed in two halves, which are then fused together.
The roll-to-roll approach continues beyond the cell itself, through the steps that turn it into a finished module. This reduces much of the handling, complexity, and cost traditionally associated with cell-to-module manufacturing.
The significance becomes clear on the factory floor. Continuous processing allows large production volumes to be achieved within a small space. Extremely thin printed layers keep material consumption low, while the manufacturing process uses little energy. Together, these features create the basis for lower capital requirements and operating costs as production scales.
Making this work industrially took years of development, testing, and refinement. Performance, cost, quality, and capacity all had to come together—not just in individual laboratory samples, but consistently across thousands of metres of material.
That is the print that never stops: every layer printed, cells turned into modules roll-to-roll, and a process designed for scale from the start. It is what makes Epishine’s thin, flexible indoor solar cells possible, and what could change where, and at what scale, solar cells are used.
But a process is only as good as what runs through it. Next time, we look at the material at the heart of it all, one most people never think about.