Harnessing sunlight for mankind’s gain is a tale as old as time. From starting fires to using mirrors to light torches, and from integrating solar panels into buildings to large-scale solar power plants, it may seem as if we’ve done it all. Now, a solar panel thinner than paper has been engineered, creating a whole new world of power possibilities.<\/p>\n
Change, no matter how small, could make a big difference. For the past 70 years, traditional solar panel designs have not changed much<\/strong>. They might be more efficient and less expensive than they used to be, but we are still stuck with silicon cells wedged between plastic and glass, aluminium frames, and an array of rails to be installed on roofs, or installed with concrete ballasts.<\/p>\n Besides the boring same-old designs, photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight into electricity, are very fragile and susceptible to harsh weather. The required infrastructure to aid in protection results in traditional panels being extremely heavy. However, thanks to an MIT research team, all of that is about to change<\/strong> with their innovative creation.<\/p>\n “We have a unique opportunity to rethink what solar technology looks like, how it feels, and how we deploy it.” – Vladimir Bulovi\u0107, the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology, leader of the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory (ONE Lab), director of MIT.nano, and senior author of the research paper<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The research team consisted of Bulovi\u0107, co-lead authors Mayuran Saravanapavanantham, an MIT electrical engineering and computer science graduate student, and Jeremiah Mwaura, MIT research scientist in the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics. Together, they created fabric solar cells able to swiftly and simply convert<\/strong> any surface into a power-generating surface. These cells don’t require much infrastructure compared to traditional solar cells, which makes them one-hundredth the weight.<\/p>\n The team utilized printable electronic inks to print electrodes on a thin plastic sheet. This approach is similar to T-shirt printing<\/strong>. Their next step was to glue the plastic sheet to any chosen surface. For this step, the team decided on Dyneema, as it is quite durable. In the last step, the fabric was peeled away, picking up the electrodes and leaving a clean plastic sheet behind. The result was a solar panel thinner than paper<\/a>!<\/p>\n Bulovi\u0107 confirmed that Dyneema’s fibers are very sturdy, which is why bulletproof vests are made from it. Beyond the ultra-thin sheet’s durability, it has other shocking benefits<\/strong>, including:<\/p>\n “The metrics used to evaluate a new solar cell technology are typically limited to their power conversion efficiency and their cost in dollars-per-watt. Just as important is integrability \u2014 the ease with which the new technology can be adapted. The lightweight solar fabrics enable integrability, providing impetus for the current work. We strive to accelerate solar adoption, given the present urgent need to deploy new carbon-free sources of energy.” – Bulovi\u0107<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The team will replace their cells with perovskite solar cells in the future to match traditional solar panels’ efficiency. For now, they have achieved their goal, which was to increase solar energy’s accessibility and portability<\/a>.<\/strong> In a new era of photovoltaics, it seems the thinner the technology, the better the results<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Harnessing sunlight for mankind’s gain is a tale as old as time. From starting fires to using mirrors to light torches, and from integrating solar panels into buildings to large-scale solar power plants, it may seem as if we’ve done it all. Now, a solar panel thinner than paper has been engineered, creating a whole … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":10397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"solar panel,dyneema","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"Harnessing sunlight for mankind's gain is a tale as old as time. Now, we have a solar panel thinner than paper, and a whole new world of power possibilities.","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A solar panel thinner than paper<\/h2>\n
The invention has shocking benefits<\/h2>\n
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