Using screen printing (a technique similar to how designs are added to silkscreened T-shirts), an electrode is deposited on the structure to complete the solar module. Working in the MIT.nano clean room, they coat the solar cell structure using a slot-die coater, which deposits layers of the electronic materials onto a prepared, releasable substrate that is only 3 microns thick. To produce the solar cells, they use nanomaterials that are in the form of a printable electronic inks. In this work, they set out to develop thin-film solar cells that are entirely printable, using ink-based materials and scalable fabrication techniques. But these ultrathin solar cells were fabricated using complex, vacuum-based processes, which can be expensive and challenging to scale up. Six years ago, the ONE Lab team produced solar cells using an emerging class of thin-film materials that were so lightweight they could sit on top of a soap bubble. Traditional silicon solar cells are fragile, so they must be encased in glass and packaged in heavy, thick aluminum framing, which limits where and how they can be deployed. The research is published today in Small Methods. 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. We strive to accelerate solar adoption, given the present urgent need to deploy new carbon-free sources of energy,” says 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. The lightweight solar fabrics enable integrability, providing impetus for the current work. Just as important is integrability - the ease with which the new technology can be adapted. “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. This lightweight solar technology can be easily integrated into built environments with minimal installation needs. For instance, they could be integrated onto the sails of a boat to provide power while at sea, adhered onto tents and tarps that are deployed in disaster recovery operations, or applied onto the wings of drones to extend their flying range. They are one-hundredth the weight of conventional solar panels, generate 18 times more power-per-kilogram, and are made from semiconducting inks using printing processes that can be scaled in the future to large-area manufacturing.īecause they are so thin and lightweight, these solar cells can be laminated onto many different surfaces. They can provide energy on the go as a wearable power fabric or be transported and rapidly deployed in remote locations for assistance in emergencies. These durable, flexible solar cells, which are much thinner than a human hair, are glued to a strong, lightweight fabric, making them easy to install on a fixed surface. MIT engineers have developed ultralight fabric solar cells that can quickly and easily turn any surface into a power source.
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