A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have released details of a new development in the field of solar technology: the paper solar panel.
On the back of successful breakthroughs in the manufacture of thin-film solar panels with inkjet print technology, the MIT scientists’ technique deposits solar photovoltaic patterns onto simple sheets of paper or even cloth using special vaporous inks.
The process is very different from standard solar panel manufacturing techniques and works in much the same way as that used to lay down the silver lining inside bags of potato chips – five layers of vaporous inks are laid onto the medium (paper, PET plastic, or cloth) inside a vacuum-locked chamber to create a pattern of photovoltaic cells.
The technology has the advantage of being able to be carried out at a much lower cost, due to the absence of expensive substrates like glass or silicon in the process, and the materials used are 100% recyclable.
According to the MIT team, the result is truly flexible thin-film solar panel that could drastically reduce the costs of solar installations with an ability to deliver a vastly higher watts-per-kilogram energy load than traditional solar panels.
In a report published in the journal Advanced Materials, the researchers demonstrate the resilience of the paper solar panel by folding and unfolding it 1,000 times without loss of energy conversion. The technology has successfully produced working solar panels using plain printing paper, tissue, tracing paper, and even newspaper with print still on it.
"Often people talk about deposition on a flexible device – but then they don’t flex it, to actually demonstrate that it can survive the stress," says Karen Gleason, MIT Professor of Chemical Engineering.
Currently the paper solar panel has an efficiency rating of just one percent, but the team say they can significantly boost this figure and deliver a product that could revolutionise the small-scale solar market.
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