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.

What is the structure of a solar cell?

Schematic structure of solar cells comprising various functional materials: a flexible substrate, two electrodes, and an active layer. The direction of light entry to the active layer determines the optical requirement for the substrate and the electrodes. Reported best efficiencies of solar cells made with various active materials.

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.

What happens if a solar module is folded?

When the solar modules subjected to folding, the Jsc started to decrease and gradually saturated at around 4 mA cm -2 after 10 cycles of folding/unfolding, while the Voc almost remained constant throughout 40 times folding/unfolding, as shown in Figure 3D. Foldable solar cells with crease in the predesigned place.

What is the difference between bending and folding in solar cells?

However, in contrast to mild bending with curvature radius of several millimeters, folding generates the crease with extreme curvature radius of sub-millimeter, resulting in the appearance of large strain and stress. As a result, it is highly challenging to realize robustly foldable and highly efficient solar cells.