Foldable Photovoltaic Panel Case Study

How to build highly foldable solar cells?

The key requirements to construct highly foldable solar cells, including structure design based on tuning the neutral axis plane, and adopting flexible alternatives including substrates, transparent electrodes and absorbers, are intensively discussed.

What are foldable solar cells?

Key points for achieving highly foldable solar cells Compared to the normal bendable solar cells which can endure flexion with a smooth curve with radius of several millimeters, foldable solar cells can tolerate the crease at the edge with a curvature radius of sub-millimeter.

Why is it difficult to develop robustly foldable solar cells?

As a result, cracks will be formed in the functional layers or delamination will be occurred at the interface as soon as the strain exceeds the crack onset strain, leading to the degradation or even failure of the solar cells under repeated folding. Therefore, it is highly challenging to realize robustly foldable solar cells.

Can polymer substrates be used for foldable solar cells?

Besides paper and woven fabric, the normally used polymer substrates can also be applied as the substrates for foldable solar cells. Kaltenbrunner et al. demonstrated ultrathin perovskite solar cells on 1.4 µm PET substrates, which exhibited stabilized efficiency of 12% and a power-per-weight as high as 23 W g −1.

Are ultrathin polymers a promising substrate for foldable solar cells?

In addition, the fabrication of ultrathin polymer and paper is gradually mature. Therefore, they are believed as promising substrates for foldable solar cells. To date, ITO still maintains its predominance as transparent electrodes for high-performance flexible thin film solar cells.

Are foldable solar cells a future development?

In the end, some perspectives for the future development of foldable solar cells, especially the standard folding procedure, improvement in the folding endurance through revealing failure mechanism, are provided.