Solar panels printed on paper

Cnet.

Last year, MIT developed the world's first solar panel printed on paper. A recent MIT study in the journal Advanced Materials by Karen Gleason and colleagues details the innovation.

According to TreeHugger, the new process utilises a brand new technique of printing - it uses vapours instead of liquids, prints at cooler temperatures, and the printing is done in a vacuum chamber.

The conditions for printing are easier on the substrates that create the solar cells, and they can be printed onto practically any old surface like untreated paper and even plastic.

What's more, the printed cells hold up through significant use. The researchers printed a solar cell on a sheet of PET plastic then folded and unfolded it 1 000 times. The solar cell performed just as well as before it was folded at all.

Energy Matters writes that the technology has the advantage of being able to be carried out at a much lower cost, due to the absence of expensive substrates like glass or silicon in the process, and the materials used are 100% recyclable.

According to the MIT team, the result is truly flexible thin-film solar panel that could drastically reduce the costs of solar installations with an ability to deliver a vastly higher watts-per-kilogram energy load than traditional solar panels.