MIT engineers have developed an ultralight fabric solar cell that can quickly and easily turn any surface into an energy source.
Much thinner than a human hair, these durable and flexible solar cells are secured with a strong, lightweight fabric that makes them easy to attach to a stable surface. They can transmit energy on the go in the form of wearables, or can be quickly transported and used to remote locations to respond to emergencies. It weighs one hundredth the weight of conventional solar cells, produces 18 times more energy per kilogram, and is made with semiconductor inks using a printing process that could be scaled up to full-scale production in the future.
Being extremely thin and light, these solar panels can be laminated to a variety of surfaces. For example, they can be tucked into the sails of ships to provide power at sea, mounted on tents and tarpaulins set up during disaster recovery operations, or mounted on the wings of drones to extend their flight range. This lightweight solar technology can be easily integrated into the built environment with minimal installation requirements.
The metrics used to evaluate new solar cell technologies are generally limited to energy conversion efficiency and dollars per watt. Integration is just as important. Ease of adapting to new technologies. Lightweight fabric for sun protection. Enabling integration while contributing to work in progress. Our goal is to accelerate the introduction of solar energy, given the current urgent need for new carbon neutral energy sources,” said Uladzimir Bulavych, Head of the Department of New Technologies at Fariborz Masie, Head of the Organic and Regulatory Laboratory for Nanostructured Electronics (ONE Lab), and director of MIT. .nano and senior author of a new paper describing the work.
Paulovich was joined on paper by co-author Mayuran Saravanappavanantham, an electrical and computer engineering graduate student at MIT. and Jeremiah Mora, a researcher at the Electronic Research Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The study was published today in the journal Small Methods .
The sun has set
Conventional silicon solar cells are fragile, so they must be encased in glass and packaged in thick, heavy aluminum housings, which limit where and how they can be placed.
Six years ago, the ONE Lab team produced solar cells using a new class of thin film material that was light enough to fit inside a soap bubble. But these ultrathin solar cells are made using a complex vacuum process that is expensive and difficult to measure.
In this work, they set out to develop fully printable thin-film solar cells using ink-based materials and scalable fabrication methods.
To make solar cells, they use nanomaterials in the form of electronic printing ink. Working in an MIT cleanroom, they applied a coating layer to the structure of a solar cell, which deposits a layer of electronic material onto a trigger-discharge substrate just 3 microns thick. Using screen printing (a technique similar to how designs are added to screen printing t-shirts), an electrode is placed on the structure to equip the solar module.
The researchers were then able to remove the printed modules, which are about 15 microns thick, from the plastic substrate, forming a lightweight solar device.
But these flimsy self-supporting solar modules are difficult to handle and break easily, making them difficult to install. To solve this problem, the MIT team looked for a lightweight, flexible, and high-strength substrate on which solar cells could be mounted. They identified the fabric as the perfect solution because it provides flexibility and mechanical resistance with little added weight.
They found the perfect material: a composite fabric that weighs just 13 grams per square meter, called Dyneema. This fabric is made of a very strong fiber that is used as a rope to lift the cruise ship Costa Concordia that sank from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. By adding a layer of UV-curable glue several microns thick, they bonded the solar modules to these fabric panels. This forms a light and mechanically strong structure of the sun.
"While printing solar cells directly onto fabric may appear simpler, this will limit the selection of possible fabrics or other receiving surfaces that are chemically and thermally compatible with all the processing steps required to manufacture the device. This approach decouples the production of solar cells from their eventual integration. ,” explained Saravanapavanantham.
Outperforms traditional solar panels
When they tested the device, MIT researchers found that it could produce 730 watts per kilogram at rest and about 370 watts per kilogram when placed on high-strength Dyneema cloth, about 18 times as much power per kilogram. compared to conventional solar cells.
The capacity of a rooftop solar system in Massachusetts is about 8,000 watts. To generate the same amount of energy, our textile PV panels would only add about 20 kilograms (44 pounds) to the roof of a house,” he said.
They also tested their device for durability and found that even after the solar panel cloth was folded and unfolded more than 500 times, the cells retained more than 90 percent of their original power-generating capabilities.
While their solar cells are much lighter and more flexible than conventional cells, they must be wrapped in a different material to protect them from the environment. The carbon-based organic materials used to manufacture cells can be altered by exposure to moisture and oxygen in the air, which can impair their performance.
"These heavy glass solar cells, like traditional silicon solar cells, reduce current development costs, so the team is currently developing ultra-thin packaging solutions that will partly add to the weight of today's ultra-light devices," said Mora.
"We worked to remove as many non-solar active ingredients as possible while preserving the form factor and performance of this ultra-lightweight and flexible solar design. For example, we knew that the manufacturing process could be simplified by printing a single version of the substrate, which is equivalent to the process we use. to build another layer of devices. This will accelerate the translation of this technology to market."
This story is being republished by MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular website covering news related to research, innovation, and teaching at MIT.
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