Slim, sleek, and super-flexible: The new avatar of solar panels

The turn of millennium was accompanied by a new era in technology, wherein the bulky things started getting replaced by their slim, sleek and portable counterparts. Be it power-efficient flat screen televisions fitting into much smaller space than the conventional CRT televisions, the classic bulky telephones being replaced initially by the cordless and then by palm-sized mobile phones or now the smart-watches at your service as efficiently as your smartphone! Many such devices could shed-off their bulky feature, and now being around us in the slim, sleek, and super flexible avatar!

Still one domain is waiting for this transition to take place – the strongest contender in the renewable source of energy-the solar power panel prevailing with its rigid, heavy and bulky form. Currently silicon solar cells cover 95% of the solar cell market, owing to their highest reported power conversion efficiency- 30% of the sunlight is converted into electric power by the silicon solar cells. But the rigid, heavy and bulk nature is limiting its widespread application, especially in portable devices, vehicles, aircrafts etc.

But here’s some news from Stanford university, wherein researchers have successfully developed a slim, sleek and flexible solar panel material! This new avatar is made of ~0.2-micron thick transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) as the active component, which further has even thinner gold contacts, one atomic layer thick conducting graphene. This whole assembly is embedded inside anti-reflective, flexible polyimide which has higher light absorption capacity, resulting into a sleek 6-micron thin assembly. In other words, a pile of 15 such solar panels would still be thinner than a normal paper!

The story doesn’t end here! The TMDs being biocompatible, can be used as wearables-that come in contact with human skin. The bending tests have confirmed the flexibility and this version of TMDs based solar cells is performing twice better than their existing counterparts, converting almost 5 % of sunlight into electric power, which is predicted to reach 27% through some optimization. Kudos to the researchers and their consistent efforts for bringing this slim, sleek version of solar panel. It would be interesting to watch drones, aircrafts, wearable devices powered by the economic, super thin, light, and super-efficient piece this flexible gen-next solar panels.

Please see the following news Source(s) and original reference(s) therein:

(Report source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27195-7)

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Dr Smita Chaturvedi
Smita is an experimental condensed matter physicist. The quest for multifunctional materials motivates her. Smita finished her PhD from RDVV Jabalpur and BARC Mumbai in the year 2002 and worked as a research associate in IIT Mumbai and Oakland University, Michigan. Smita was awarded as a Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional excellence fellow in 2018-19. Smita holds more than a decade of research and teaching experience. She possesses good knowledge about education system and research opportunities in India as well as abroad. Music and gardening are her mindful meditations.
Dr. Priyadarshini Karve
Dr Priyadarshini Karve has worked in the areas of household energy, decentralised waste-to-fuel technologies, climate change mitigation and adaptation, sustainable and climate-ready urbanisation, etc. She runs her own social green enterprise Samuchit Enviro Tech in Pune, focused on enabling access to sustainable products and services. She is also a co-founder of OrjaBox, a startup promoting solar thermal technologies. Dr Karve is a Founder Member of Clean Energy Access Network (CLEAN - a multi-state society of decentralised renewable energy practitioners and entrepreneurs) and Cleaner Cooking Coalition (CCC - an international organisation focused on promoting user-centric cooking energy technologies that are good for health as well as climate). She is also the National Convener of Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change (INECC - focused on climate justice issues and working to bring people's voices in policy choices). Her work has been recognised by several national and international awards and honours.
Sanjay Khare
Sanjay Khare ,after his graduation in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1986 has been associated with major Japanese & European Automotive OEMs in Indian Subcontinent for 35 years . Widely travelled across Europe & Asia , he has held positions across diverse functions of Automotive Corporations.
In his current role as Board Member and Vice President at Skoda Auto Volkswagen India , he is Chief Sustainability Catalyst to guide actions at Skoda Auto Volkswagen India along with the sister brands Audi, Porsche & Lamborghini.
He leads an active Climate Resilience program where the automotive major in India has already achieved Zero Waste to Landfill, Water Positive & Zero liquid Discharge Certification, Zero Accidents , targeting an 18.5 MW of installed Roof Top Solar plant at a single Automotive site in India in 2021 and fully Carbon Neutral Production by 2025.
Sanjay has done his Executive MBA from Management development Institute ,Gurgaon specialising in Strategy & Marketing . He has active interests in driving Cultural Change, Competency building , Human Motivation topics while adopting/ innovating the technological advancements and total quality revolution.He is also a Qualified Independent Director registered with Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Govt. of India. An active speaker on Automotive & Sustainability topics on National & International forums.
In personal life, he is an Endurance Cyclist having participated in many adventure ride expeditions . He also spends his time in developing mastery on Indian Classical Music instrument Sitar.