© Melanie Gonick, MIT : MIT researchers have developed a scalable manufacturing technology to create ultra-thin, lightweight solar cells that can be attached to any surface.MIT engineers have developed powerful solar technology that can go beyond your roof.
Newly developed solar panels can stick to a variety of surfaces, from boat sails to drone wings and even the clothes you wear, providing power on the go. The new technology surpasses conventional solar modules in size and power with 18 times more performance per kilogram at one hundredth the weight.
Research on this new material was presented in an MIT press release on Friday. Uladzimir Bulavich, head of MIT's Laboratory of Organic and Nanostructured Electronics (ONE Lab) and lead author of a new paper describing the work, said in a statement that the technology is the answer to the need for carbon-free energy sources.
“The metrics used to evaluate new solar cell technologies are typically limited to their energy conversion efficiency and dollar cost per watt. Equally important is integrability, that is, the ease of adapting new technologies. Lightweight solar fabrics allow for integration and provide an impetus for ongoing work," Bulovich said.
Lightweight technology is a big win for homeowners. Mayuran Saravanapavanantham, one of the study's lead authors, told MIT that the new panels would add only about 44 pounds to a cottage roof to generate 8,000 watts of power, the amount of a typical Massachusetts rooftop solar panel. For reference, the average solar panel weighs approximately 40 pounds.
Not only is the technology revolutionary, but so is the manufacturing process: thin-plate cells can be fully printed with ink-based materials. They are then attached to a lightweight but strong fabric called Dyneema.
"While it may seem easier to simply print solar cells directly onto fabric, this would limit the choice of possible fabrics or other receptive surfaces to those that are chemically and thermally compatible with all the processing steps required to manufacture the devices." Our approach decouples the production of solar cells from their final integration,” explains Saravanapavanantham.
But the tech still won't be mounted on your roof or sewn to your clothes. The team is always looking for the right material to wrap the product in that will protect it from the elements while remaining ultra-thin.
"We sought to remove as much active non-solar material as possible while maintaining the form factor and performance of these ultralight and flexible solar structures," Jeremiah Mwaura, another co-author of the paper, told MIT.
If the right material is found, this solar cloth will be able to bring innovative and ecological energy to everyday life.
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The post This MIT solar technology can turn any surface into a power source appeared first on Boston.com.
