The lightweight fabric solar cells that MIT engineers have created can swiftly and simply convert any surface into a power source.
These resilient, flexible solar cells are attached to a sturdy, lightweight fabric and are much thinner than a human hair, making them simple to mount on a permanent surface. They can be transported and quickly deployed in remote regions to provide assistance in an emergency or they can provide energy on the go as a wearable power fabric. They are created of semiconducting inks utilising printing techniques that can be scaled up in the future to large-area manufacturing and generate 18 times more power per kilogramme than conventional solar panels.
These solar cells may be laminated onto many different surfaces because they are so light and thin. These solar cells may be bonded onto many different surfaces because they are so light and thin. For example, they could be affixed to tents and tarps that are used in disaster recovery operations, integrated onto a boat’s sails to give power while at sea, or used on drone wings to increase their flying distance. This portable solar technology requires little installation and is simple to integrate into built environments.
Vladimir Bulović, the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology, leader of the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory (ONE Lab), director of MIT.nano, and senior author of a new paper describing the work said “The metrics used to evaluate a new solar cell technology are typically limited to their power conversion efficiency and their cost in dollars-per-watt. Just as important is integrability — the ease with which the new technology can be adapted. The lightweight solar fabrics enable integrability, providing impetus for the current work. We strive to accelerate solar adoption, given the present urgent need to deploy new carbon-free sources of energy.”
Joining Bulović on the paper are co-lead authors Mayuran Saravanapavanantham, an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student at MIT; and Jeremiah Mwaura, a research scientist in the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics. The research is published today in Small Methods.