Textile Solar Cells Offer Flexible Power

Aug-03-19 Flexible, textile-based rolls of solar cells could find their way onto building blinds and truck tarps.

The pliable solar cells were made possible in part due to advances in the textile industry. Developed by the team at Fraunhofer as part of the PhotoTex project, the solar cells are integrated into a glass-fiber fabric that meets the required standards of fire resistance, tensile strength and manufacturing affordability, with the electrodes (made of a conductive polyester) and photovoltaic layer applied using transfer printing.

Currently, the textile solar cell offer an efficiency of 0.1 to 0.3 percent, but the team hopes to bring that up to 5 percent and see the cells commercialized in about five years.

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[CO.UK]
[FRAUNHOFER.DE]

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