Inexpensive, Light-Weight, Flexible Solar Panels

In today’s world, we all are aware as to what solar panels are. But the growth does not stop with this. We have a space crunch everywhere with the increasing population. So installing more and more efficient systems in lesser space is the need of the day. As we all know that the expanse of solar panel is  pretty big and requires large space for installation. So to overcome this difficulty, we have the flexible solar panels to serve the purpose..

Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets. The conventional solar cells are rigid and bulky. With the advent of these new solar cells, this problem is taken care of. These cells are light weight, flexible robust and have high efficiency. Arrays of these silicon solar cells are cheaper to manufacture because they use less quantity of silicon in the process.

John Rogers a professor of material sciences and engineering at the University of Illinois used a process of etching and transfer printing to create the flexible arrays of silicon cells. The thickness of this array was one tenth of the conventional array. The researchers etched  bars 1.5 mm long, 50 micrometers wide and 15 micrometers thick from monocrystalline silicon. They picked up these bars using stamps of soft polymers and placed them on the substrate (flexible plastic). Conventional solar cells use a layer of silicon 150 to 200 micrometers thick.. The thickness in flexible cell is wide enough to be flexible and provides enough mechanical strength.

The  etched bars also called as carbon nano tubes are combined with tiny carbon Buckyballs (known as fullerenes) to form a snake like structure. These bucky balls trap the electrons. But remember that they cannot make the electrons flow. The sunlight is made incident on the polymer to excite it. These balls then grab the electrons. The nano tubes act as a copper conductor after this and stars conducting the flow of electrons. We can also have the water proof panels in case there are rains. In some cases we also have the portable solar panels. The flexible solar panels can be used in Digicams, laptops, mobile phone batteries, MP3 players etc.

Moreover with the technological developments the life of these panels is increased. Earlier, it was only 8 Hours, but today it has been increased to several months. So when you carry these things with you, make sure you have these versatile flexible cells with you to run the show.