Flexible Solar Cells From Caltech
The California Institute of Technology are developing flexible solar cells that may prove to be cheaper and more efficient than current types on the market.
This is a new breed of cells that uses thin silicon wires embedded in a polymer substrate along with light scattering particles. If you are lost then don’t worry, so am I. This technology is moving fast and as users and consumers the physics of the materials sometimes does not quite makes sense.
Normally solar cells just gather the electrons that happen to fall on them. The efficiency can be improved by adding multiple layer to catch the light that escapes the previous layers. In the Caltech implementation this is all turned on its side and the light particles bounce around and are reflected. Eventually they are caught by the silicon wires and are turned in to electrical charge.
In the experiments the researchers have manages to capture up to 85% of the photons.
Silicon that is used to make the solar cells is quite costly once it is refined and is a major factor in the end price of solar panels. These new types of cells use just one fiftieth of the amount of silicon and obviously will cut the price by a large amount.
Using silicon wires instead of silicon wafers to manufacture the panels means they have the added advantage of being flexible. This not only allows the manufacturing process to be easier but also makes the end panels to be more versatile in their use.
Currently Caltech are working on laboratory scale cells of around a few centimeter and are hoping to devise ways of scaling up the devices to something more usable.
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