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Ultra-Thin Solar Cells Can Be Bent Around A Pencil (computerworld.com.au)
angry tapir quotes a report from Computerworld: Scientists in South Korea have developed solar cells thin enough they can be bent around a pencil. The cells could help usher in the use of solar energy in small portable gadgets where space is at a premium. The cells are fabricated onto a flexible substrate that is just a micrometer thick -- one-half to one-quarter the thickness of other "thin" solar cells and hundreds of times thinner than conventional cells. [The team at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea managed to reduce the thickness by directly attaching the cells to the substrate without the use of an adhesive. They were stamped onto the substrate and then cold welded, a process that binds two materials together through pressure, not heat. The scientists tested the cells and discovered they can almost be folded in half -- wrapped around a radius as small as 1.4 millimeters. A paper describing the work was published on Monday in Applied Physics Letters, a journal of the American Institute of Physics.]
These would go great on electric cars. They wouldn't be enough to charge the batteries for putting the car in motion, but they would be enough to power sensors, displays, entertainment systems.
And cars stay out in the sun a whole lot of time.
the pencil is used as an example because everyone can picture how tight the bend radius is...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
This is huge news for those of us that suffer from arthritis. No more struggling with those ridiculously thin pencils! Freedom at last!
Garry Knight
. . . like cost and durability ? If they are thin and flexible but degrade or fail easily (or are temperature sensitive, or the substrate breaks down under prolonged UV exposure, for example. . .) then it's only a nifty tech demonstrator.
Likewise, if the cost per watt is an order of magnitude higher than other, less-flexible technologies.
It's a complicated balancing act, and articles like this simply don't give much more information than a press release. Neat Tech ? Sure. Usable Tech ? Insufficient information. . .
The whole point of bendability is not that people are going to start wearing solar cells on their clothing (though we could see "charging hats" for hikers), but that it becomes practical to stick cells directly onto objects that flex slightly in use, like shingles. Solar shingles could make rooftop PV a default standard for new construction.