Ultra-Thin, Flexible Solar Cells Could Soon Coat and Power Your Stuff

Imagine solar panels so thin and pliable that you can power all your devices by slapping them onto your house, car, smartphone, and knapsack. That tech could be coming soon, thanks to Oxford University’s physics department, which may have made a major breakthrough that could be consumer-ready in the near future.

The tech hinges on a technique that allows multiple layers of light-absorbing material to be packed into a single, ultra-thin solar cell that is just a single micron thick. For comparison, that’s just 0.00003937 inches, or 0.001 millimeters, or smaller than some bacteria. Conventional photovoltaics are about 150 times thicker. In a statement, the researchers said this ultra-thin design allows the cells to be applied as a coating, which allows for increased flexibility, without losing efficiency.

The scientists will formally reveal their methods for creating the cells, which are made of the mineral perovskite, in a paper that will be published in an academic journal later this year. The tech has already garnered a certification from Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, which verified they convert 27% of the sunlight that hits them into electricity. That’s a key number, as it matches—or even surpasses—the average efficiency of traditional solar panel materials.

“During just five years experimenting with our stacking or multi-junction approach we have raised power conversion efficiency from around 6% to over 27%, close to the limits of what single-layer photovoltaics can achieve today,” said Shuaifeng Hu, a post-doctoral fellow at Oxford who worked on the project. “We believe that, over time, this approach could enable the photovoltaic devices to achieve far greater efficiencies, exceeding 45%.”

Some of the researchers behind the new tech have already begun trying to go commercial with perovskite solar cells. Oxford PV was founded by Henry Snaith, a professor at Oxford who spearheaded the school’s work in photovoltaics and has begun large-scale manufacturing operations.

While most people envision huge farms covered in glimmering panels when they think of solar energy, the hope is that the perovskite cells can bring renewable energy directly to homes, vehicles, and even clothing. Scientists have been hard at work in recent years to make solar power a more feasible option, going so far as to develop cells that can create electricity from water, as well as light. They’ve been largely successful: the price of solar power has fallen by over 80% since 2010.

“We can envisage perovskite coatings being applied to broader types of surface to generate cheap solar power, such as the roof of cars and buildings and even the backs of mobile phones,” said Junke Wang, a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford. “If more solar energy can be generated in this way, we can foresee less need in the longer term to use silicon panels or build more and more solar farms.”

Given that CO2 emissions need to shrink drastically, and soon, to prevent a climate disaster, the future of shiny, power-generating knapsacks can’t come soon enough.