Solar textile

We're developing processes to make fiber solar cells that can be woven into textile. Potential advantages are:

• Fiber manufacturing paradigms may lead to lower manufacturing costs
• Textile geometries may provide light trapping for higher efficiencies
• Multijunction geometries can be achieved with weaving patterns
• Solar textile can be integrated with technical textile such as carbon fiber composites (e.g. the shell of an unmanned aircraft can also function as an energy harvesting skin)
• Solar textile could be easier to install than rigid solar panels

Our current approach focuses on organic thin-film solar cell architectures such as the one shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1: Schematic of how a solar fiber may be implemented.

Project info

• People: Whitney Gaynor and Peter Peumans
• Sponsor: AFOSR
• Contact: Peter Peumans