Ricoh Plans Inkjet Perovskite Solar Plant in Japan

Ricoh plans to mass-produce perovskite solar cells using the inkjet printing technology it built for its printers. The Japanese company said on 27 October that it will set up a production site at Ricoh Industry’s Tohoku Site in Shibata, Miyagi Prefecture, and aims for annual production capacity of “several hundred megawatts” by 2030, with later expansion to gigawatt scale.

The project has been selected for Japan’s GX (Green Transformation) Supply Chain Development Support Program, run by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). A list of selected companies published the same day by the programme’s secretariat puts the project cost at ¥29.58bn, about $186m, and Ricoh’s subsidy application at up to ¥9.86bn, about $62m.

In brief

Ricoh will build a production site for inkjet-printed perovskite solar cells in Miyagi Prefecture, with mass production targeted by 2030.
It aims for several hundred megawatts of annual capacity by 2030, then gigawatt scale.
METI’s GX supply chain programme selected the project; the secretariat lists a ¥29.58bn cost and a subsidy application of up to ¥9.86bn.
Ricoh says inkjet printing forms every functional layer of the cell, which it expects to cut material waste and cost.

What Ricoh announced

According to Ricoh’s release, the site will use a manufacturing process based on its own inkjet technology. The product is inkjet-printed perovskite solar cells, and the target start of mass production is “by 2030”. The company gave no figures for efficiency, durability or price, and named no customers.

Perovskite cells are thin, light and flexible. Ricoh says that lets them go on rooftops and walls of buildings that cannot bear the weight of conventional silicon panels. It also says that wider use still depends on better power output and durability, on making the cells at stable quality in volume, and on lower production costs.

The money comes from the support programme’s film-type perovskite category. The secretariat’s list shows Ricoh as the only company selected in that category. It names the main place of work as Natori, also in Miyagi Prefecture, rather than Shibata. A separate list for tandem-type cells, published the same day, shows Choshu Industry in Yamaguchi Prefecture with a project cost of about ¥7.59bn. The secretariat notes that the application amounts are ceilings and that the subsidies actually paid may differ.

How the inkjet approach works

Ricoh says its inkjet technology places “the right amount of material exactly where it is needed”. It uses that to pattern-print all of the functional layers of the cell, which it says should improve material use, streamline manufacturing, raise productivity and cut costs. The method draws on printhead, ink-supply and printing-system technology from Ricoh’s commercial and industrial printing businesses.

The company also points to earlier work on organic solar cells, which grew out of the organic photoconductor technology used in its multifunction printers. In September 2025, a Ricoh project to develop and demonstrate inkjet-printed perovskite cells was selected for support from the Green Innovation Fund run by NEDO, Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization. Ricoh calls the wider effort “Functional Printing”: using inkjet printing to coat and deposit materials in manufacturing, not only to print documents.

A state-backed bet on making perovskites at home

The size of the subsidy says as much as the capacity target. On the secretariat’s figures, Ricoh has applied for up to a third of the project’s ¥29.58bn cost. The programme’s stated aim is to build domestic manufacturing supply chains in green-transformation fields such as perovskite cells, floating offshore wind, fuel cells and electrolysers, ahead of other countries. An earlier round of the same programme backed Mitsuboshi Diamond Industrial to make laser-processing equipment for perovskite production.

Ricoh’s choice of inkjet printing targets one of the challenges it names itself: making cells of stable quality in volume. Perovskite records are usually set on small cells, and holding quality over larger areas is difficult. TSN reported last week on Chinese researchers keeping flexible perovskite modules above 20% efficiency at commercial size after fixing a layer that formed unevenly. Printing each layer only where it is needed is a different route to the same goal of consistent, cheap production. Ricoh has not yet published data showing how its printed cells perform or how long they last.

“Several hundred megawatts” is also an early step beside the “gigawatt scale” Ricoh describes for later. The near-term market Ricoh describes is surfaces where silicon panels are hard to install, rather than the mainstream panel market. The bigger prize is a production method Japan controls, at a time when solar technology is becoming a trade issue: China has proposed adding solar technologies to its export-control catalogue.

Why it matters for clean energy

Light, flexible panels could add solar generation to roofs and walls that cannot carry the weight of conventional panels, which is the use Ricoh highlights. That would complement the storage technologies that let grids use more renewable power, from recyclable flow batteries in the lab to the grid batteries now beating gas at Australia’s evening peak.

What happens next

Ricoh says it will move from research and demonstration towards mass production and commercialisation. The milestones to watch are construction at the Miyagi site, the final subsidy amount, and the first published efficiency and durability figures for its printed cells.