New Flexible Solar Cells Technology is More Efficient and Durable

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Flexible solar cells are hailed as the future of solar power and have many potential applications in aerospace and flexible electronics, but their low energy conversion efficiency has significantly limited their practical use. However, a new manufacturing method increases the power efficiency of flexible solar cells made from perovskite.

Current flexible perovskite solar cells (FPSCs) suffer from lower power conversion efficiency than their rigid counterparts because of the inhomogeneous and soft characteristics of the flexible base material (made of polyethylene terephthalate) the perovskite films of FPSCs are built upon. FPSCs also have lower durability since they are porous, which allows water and oxygen to invade the perovskite materials and degrade them.

A team of material scientists addressed these issues by developing a new fabrication technique that increases the efficiency of FPSCs, paving the way for its use on a much larger scale.

Professor Chenyi Yi, senior author of the paper, explained: “Increasing the power conversion efficiency of FPSCs is crucial for several reasons: Higher efficiency makes FPSCs more competitive with other solar cell technologies, decreases the cost per watt of generated electricity and resources needed to produce the same amount of electrical power and increases the range of applications where FPSCs can be practically used.”

Furthermore, this new fabrication method also addresses some of the very important durability concerns over FPSCs, with Yi saying they managed to fabricate higher quality materials and achieve more efficient and stable flexible solar cells.

According to Interesting Engineering, the team achieved a new benchmark for the highest power conversion efficiency for FPSCs, and demonstrated the durability of the flexible solar cells by showing the cells maintained 90% of their power conversion efficiency after they were bent 10,000 times.

Yi concluded that their ultimate goal is to transition these high-efficiency FPSCs from laboratory scale to industrial production and “enable widespread commercial application of this technology in various fields, from wearable technology, portable electronics and aerospace power sources to large-scale renewable energy solutions.”