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MIT Researchers Printing Solar Cells On Fold-able Sheets
An anonymous reader writes "Following up on earlier work in the field, researchers at MIT are developing a process to print solar cells directly onto many common forms of paper. 'The technique represents a major departure from the systems used until now to create most solar cells, which require exposing the substrates to potentially damaging conditions, either in the form of liquids or high temperatures. The new printing process uses vapors, not liquids, and temperatures less than 120 degrees Celsius. These "gentle" conditions make it possible to use ordinary untreated paper, cloth or plastic as the substrate on which the solar cells can be printed. ... The resilient solar cells still function even when folded up into a paper airplane.'"
the dirty tricks that the printer manufacturers play now are bad. What will happen when your printer's solar cell cartridge runs low?
Very low efficiency, currently at 1% un-optimised, but potentially as cheep as crisp packets , tough and very very light... Might be good for providing night lighting or power to low wattage diagnostic equipment for places like refugee camps especially if you can get the efficiency up, remember light bulbs are surprisingly less bright than the sun so, with LEDs this should work even at its current efficiency.
The company that commercializes this tech will quickly fold.
A Solar Powered Paper Airplane!
Tape a pager-motor with a small propeller onto it and you've got a paper airplane that can circumnavigate the globe !
How cool would that be?
-S
Only if it can move fast enough to stay in the sun....
This one is actually vapor ware as the process involves a vapor deposit process.
Time to offend someone
From 2007:
"GE Engineer Sees Competitive Photovoltaics In Under 10 Years"
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/004702.html
"A high ranking engineer at General Electric says in some parts of the United States photovoltaics will become cost competitive by 2015."
From this year (2011):
"Report: GE says fossil fuels, nuclear soon costlier than solar power"
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/intelligent-energy/report-ge-says-fossil-fuels-nuclear-soon-costlier-than-solar-power/6686
And:
http://gweedopig.com/index.php/2011/04/08/ge-bets-600-million-on-2015-solar-plant/
"General Electric Co made a big push in solar power, saying it will invest $600 million to build a new factory as it pursues what it thinks could be an up to $3 billion business by 2015. The largest U.S. conglomerate, which over the last decade has made itself a leader in renewable energy, said it has designed a thin-film solar panel that converts sunlight to electricity more efficiently than rival products today. The move is likely to ramp up already intense price competition, particularly for First Solar Inc, which uses the same thin-film technology as GE has focused on."
It is happening... Not the same as printing, but that will come too most likely...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.