Flexible Solar Cells
Summary
Solar panels are flat, rigid and heavy. Materials engineer John Rogers has figured out a way to make them lightweight, flexible and transparent. Rogers and his team at the University of Illinois invented a way to use ultra-thin slices of silicon, using a printing-like process that transfers them onto lightweight plastic or even fabric.
Tests showed that these ultra-thin cells are just as efficient, while using much less material. Rogers believes that this flexibility and transparency will allow solar to be used in a wider variety of applications, and because of this flexibility and transparency, and thus lack of fragility, they will also become much more affordable.
Keywords: Solar, Energy cells, panels, silicon wafer, sunlight, Powerlight, National Renewable Laboratory, John Rogers, sciencentral, See through Cells
