Solar film can generate energy almost anywhere

U.K.-based Power Roll has been working on a way to print low-cost solar film to generate clean energy from sunlight. It’s now one crucial step closer to manufacturing its lightweight, apply-anywhere film, with a new design for its solar cells. In collaboration with researchers at the University of Sheffield, the team has devised a new microgroove structure with all the electrical contacts of the solar cell on the back rather than in front.

This not only allows for more efficient energy generation, but it also makes it cheaper and simpler to produce the solar cells. The new design also increased the number of grooves in each component of the solar cell, from 16 to 362. That improves power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) by up to 12.8 percent.

Power Roll has been focusing on embossing its ‘microgroove structures’ into a plastic substrate, similar to a hologram on a credit card. A single square meter has 500,000 microgroove structures, and these are coated with conductive materials and photo-active ink. Layers of encapsulation film keep the printed rolls stable and enhance their durability.

This is accomplished using roll-to-roll processing—coating or embossing an entire length of a material, fed continuously from one roller on to another. Power Roll uses readily available perovskite as a key material in its solar cells to absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity.

The group also used a Hard X-ray nanoprobe microscope to check the structure and composition of the solar cells for defects. The detailed images helped identify issues, such as empty spaces within the semiconductor material. This back-contact design of the solar cell allows the perovskite to directly absorb the light without it first passing through a transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layer. That negates the need for TCOs incorporating rare and expensive materials like indium. 

The company and its collaborators at Sheffield have published these advancements in the production process in Applied Energy Materials. 

Source: Power Roll, via newatlas.com,Abhimanyu Ghoshal