Plastic Innovations: Solar

Flexible solar cell woven into fabric

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 style="background-color: white; border-top-style: none; font-family: museo_sans_cond_900regular, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 34px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 34px; margin: 0px 0px 13px; padding: 0px;">
Flexible solar cell woven into fabric</h1>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0XBKoVJjnclCeitjM9tyOMIq3wD0NqsOfIUisac3JLJmy0CCzuuj9Cnpe7VQzLAdFmsNBgRpYhi6TS0042e9mKTEV3xBsMCKo8lhmVjLl4eWZ8FY0joE_6pqGCyFRaXRiGRHTmwtgMNS3/s1600/201407688_ft.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0XBKoVJjnclCeitjM9tyOMIq3wD0NqsOfIUisac3JLJmy0CCzuuj9Cnpe7VQzLAdFmsNBgRpYhi6TS0042e9mKTEV3xBsMCKo8lhmVjLl4eWZ8FY0joE_6pqGCyFRaXRiGRHTmwtgMNS3/s1600/201407688_ft.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 14.3000001907349px; text-align: left;">The solar cell textile can withstand being bent more than 200 times</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
 <span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.0029983520508px;">Wearable electronics are quickly becoming the fashion. And there could soon be a way to power those electronics indefinitely, now that </span><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.201407688" style="background-color: white; color: #006ba6; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16.0029983520508px; text-decoration: none;">scientists in China have developed a solar cell ‘textile’ that could be woven into clothes</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.0029983520508px;">. The textile retains a power-generation efficiency close to 1% even after been bent more than 200 times, and can be illuminated from both sides.</span><br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.8999996185303px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 5px;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.8999996185303px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 5px;">
Scientists have been looking into flexible solar cells for decades, partly for coating irregularly shaped objects but also for integrating into wearable fabrics. One popular line of investigation has been dye-sensitized solar cells, in which a pigment absorbs sunlight to generate electrons and their positive counterparts, holes, before passing on those charges to inexpensive semiconductors. These solar cells are cheap and flexible, but the liquid nature of their pigments means that they must be well sealed. Bend a dye-sensitized solar cell more than a few times and the seals are likely to break, destroying its light-harvesting properties.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.8999996185303px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 5px;">
That is why <a href="http://www.polymer.fudan.edu.cn/polymer/research/Penghs/main_en.htm" style="color: #006ba6; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Huisheng Peng</a> at Fudan University in Shanghai and colleagues have been exploring another option: polymer solar cells. Although their maximum efficiencies fall below 10% – about half that of crystalline silicon, the most prevalent solar cell – polymer solar cells are lightweight, flexible and easy to manufacture. Peng and colleagues’ solar cell textile consists of microscopic interwoven metal wires coated with an active polymer (to absorb the sunlight), titanium dioxide nanotubes (to conduct the electrons) and another active polymer (to conduct the holes). The researches coated each side of the textile with transparent, conductive sheets of carbon nanotubes, which complete the circuit.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.8999996185303px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 5px;">
Because of the textile’s symmetry, the cell can be illuminated on either side. In tests it exhibited a maximum efficiency of 1.08%, which varied by less than 0.03% after 200 cycles of bending. However, the textile is currently only about the size of a fingernail. ‘The main difficulties encountered are how to scale up the solar-cell textile while maintaining high energy-conversion efficiencies,’ says Peng.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.8999996185303px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 5px;">
Materials scientist <a href="http://en.coe.pku.edu.cn/Outstanding-Talents/79.htm" style="color: #006ba6; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Anyuan Cao</a>, who was not involved with the work, believes the results are interesting, particularly the use of carbon nanotube sheets to allow illumination from both sides. But he warns that wearable solar cells are still some way off. ‘Current textiles demonstrated in laboratories are too small and have low energy conversion efficiencies,’ says Cao, who is based at Peking University in China. ‘The materials involved and the fabrication processes are still expensive. Practical use not only requires that the textiles should withstand simple bending, but also that they should sustain much more complex deformations such as folding and twisting, even under dynamic conditions.’</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.8999996185303px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 5px;">
Peng says he and his colleagues are now working to increase the energy-conversion efficiency of their solar cell textile.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>

Flexible solar cell woven into fabric

Flexible solar cell woven into fabric The solar cell textile can withstand being bent more than 200 times Wearable electronics...

Why plastic solar cells could become a very big deal

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuU-Go2vq8p18y9URCdyiJ7QuZjkgS9KZeduxt-cPNpczyI7mAwby93W33B80uGoR6DKWh4jKxcszOHNPs45ekt-lrSRRmbh9FFJTTpJ1Tzy3nhonFesL6w-ycb020XPpHQYPRsylpCOTN/s1600/%23solar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuU-Go2vq8p18y9URCdyiJ7QuZjkgS9KZeduxt-cPNpczyI7mAwby93W33B80uGoR6DKWh4jKxcszOHNPs45ekt-lrSRRmbh9FFJTTpJ1Tzy3nhonFesL6w-ycb020XPpHQYPRsylpCOTN/s1600/%23solar.jpg" /></a></div>
<h1 class="entry-title" style="background: rgb(232, 237, 235); border: 0px; color: #2b3130; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 27px; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline;">
Why plastic solar cells could become a very big deal</h1>
<div>
<div style="background: rgb(232, 237, 235); border: 0px; color: #2d5955; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 8px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
One of the things I love about plastics is their ability to modernize or revolutionize existing products. Think: air bags in cars. Boeing’s new Dreamliner airplane made with plastic composites. Today’s tennis rackets made with carbon fiber-reinforced plastics—I mean, are wood tennis rackets even for sale anymore?</div>
<div style="background: rgb(232, 237, 235); border: 0px; color: #2d5955; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 8px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
There are tons of examples, but I’m especially excited about a budding new product: solar cells made with plastics. They may have the potential to revolutionize and democratize the way we collect and distribute energy from the sun.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(232, 237, 235); border: 0px; color: #2d5955; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 8px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Silicon remains the predominant material for solar cells because its structure helps create a significant photovoltaic effect (cue the blank stares from my students.) That’s just a fancy term my colleagues in the physics department use. Simply put, the sun’s light causes electrons to move through the solar cell material, which produces an electrical current.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(232, 237, 235); border: 0px; color: #2d5955; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 8px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Silicon solar cells allow these “excited electrons” to move more efficiently than most other materials. But silicon solar cells also have their challenges, particularly their cost.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(232, 237, 235); border: 0px; color: #2d5955; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 8px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
And now let’s talk about plastics and solar cells. While there have been many advances over the past few years, recent discoveries may lead to significant improvements in the technology of solar cells made with plastics. For example, researchers have found that they can manipulate the molecules in certain plastics to create ordered pathways—or “nanowires”—along which electrical charges can travel more efficiently.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(232, 237, 235); border: 0px; color: #2d5955; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 8px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
These types of advances could enable the versatility of plastics to open up new possibilities for solar technology. Plastics used in solar cells can be flexible, lightweight, and extremely thin, so plastic solar cells potentially could be printed onto walls, windows, and a variety of other surfaces—including curved ones.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(232, 237, 235); border: 0px; color: #2d5955; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 8px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Plus, plastic solar cells are expected to become significantly more affordable than existing solar cells, which could make renewable energy available to many more people, homes, and businesses.</div>
<div style="background: rgb(232, 237, 235); border: 0px; color: #2d5955; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 8px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
We’re not there yet. New technologies take time and don’t always pan out as hoped. But some industry insiders are suggesting that Silicon Valley’s next big tech innovation will be to integrateplastic solar cells into our everyday lives. Some experts predict that not only our homes but also our mobile devices and wearable technology could be powered by plastic solar cells in the not-too-distant future.</div>
</div>
</div>

Why plastic solar cells could become a very big deal

Why plastic solar cells could become a very big deal One of the things I love about plastics is their ability to modernize or revolut...

Plastic Innovations

Flexible solar cell woven into fabric

Why plastic solar cells could become a very big deal

Join us on Facebook

Popular Posts

Blog Archive