A team of Chinese scientists has made a major breakthrough in solar energy by creating flexible solar cells that are not only highly efficient but also incredibly durable.
These new solar cells can bend thousands of times without losing much of their power, making them a strong candidate for future wearable devices, portable solar panels, and even solar-powered drones.
At the heart of this breakthrough is a new kind of solar cell called a tandem cell, which is made by stacking two different materials together to capture more sunlight.
The top layer is made of perovskite, a material known for its excellent ability to turn sunlight into electricity.
The bottom layer is made of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), a well-known material used in commercial solar panels because of its strong light absorption and stability.
By combining these two materials, researchers can create solar cells that are both lightweight and powerful.
But there has been a major problem holding this technology back: CIGS has a rough surface, which makes it hard to form a smooth, high-quality perovskite layer on top. Without that smooth layer, the cell can’t perform well or last very long.
To solve this issue, Professor Ye Jichun and his team from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, developed a new method to improve how the perovskite layer sticks to the CIGS layer.
They used a clever process involving two types of liquids: one with high polarity and one with low polarity. These liquids helped control how the surface layer formed, preventing it from clumping and ensuring it spread evenly.
They also added a “seed” layer to improve how the perovskite layer grew, making it smoother and better attached to the layer below.
Using this method, the team built a flexible tandem solar cell that reached a record efficiency of 24.6%—meaning it can convert nearly a quarter of the sunlight it receives into electricity. This is one of the highest performances ever reported for a flexible thin-film solar cell.
Even after running for over 320 hours and being bent 3,000 times at a tight radius of just 1 centimeter, the cell still kept more than 90% of its original power.
This exciting development shows that high-performance solar technology doesn’t have to be stiff and bulky. With further progress, these flexible and powerful solar cells could become a common part of our daily lives, helping to power devices wherever we go.
