Researchers at Stanford University have created the world’s first flexible photovoltaic solar cells. The new solar cells can be applied to almost anything and the scientists demonstrated this by putting the solar cells on peel-and-stick film which can be applied to rough, smooth, flat or curved surfaces. Until now most solar cells were rigid, stiff and relatively heavy fixed structures mostly due to having to be applied to substrates like glass.
The scientific paper detailing the new peel-and-stick solar cells was published by Nature late last week and entitled Peel-and-Stick: Fabricating Thin Film Solar Cell on Universal Substrates. The paper describes how it is currently difficult to manufacture solar cells using anything other than rigid and heat tolerant silicon or glass based materials, however “Here, we report a new peel-and-stick process that circumvents these fabrication challenges by peeling off the fully fabricated TFSCs from the original Si wafer and attaching TFSCs to virtually any substrates regardless of materials, flatness and rigidness.” So manufacturing is done on a rigid, heat resistant surface and then the solar cells are peeled/transferred off.
Using the peel-and-stick process the researchers could apply solar cells to many different surfaces such as paper, plastics, mobile phones and room windows. Furthermore the surfaces where you apply the peel-and-stick cells to don’t have to be flat; “Now you can put them on helmets, cell phones, convex windows, portable electronic devices, curved roofs, clothing – virtually anything,” said Xiaolin Zheng, a Stanford assistant professor of mechanical engineering and senior author of the research paper.
Importantly none of this bending and shaping and added flexibility in the solar cells had an impact upon the original solar cell efficiency. It’s not a case of taking a step forward and then a step back. The peel-and-stick process is also frugal with resources “There's also no waste. The silicon wafer is typically undamaged and clean after removal of the solar cells, and can be reused,” explained Zheng.
