Plastic shell solar panel power generation

What is a plastic solar cell?

The researchers at UC Santa Barbara in 1992 successfully made first “plastic” solar cell an OPV device containing a conjugated organic polymer and demonstrated photo-induced electron transfer from poly [2-methoxy-5- (20-ethylhexyloxy)-p-phenylene vinylene] (MEH-PPV) to C 60 .

What is the power conversion efficiency of polymer solar cells?

Power conversion efficiency up to 6% and 6.5% have been reported in the literature for solution-processed polymer solar cells in single-junction and tandem configuration, respectively, and a record efficiency of 6.77% has been recently announced.

Why do plastic solar cells use MEH-PPV?

The early plastic solar cells utilized MEH-PPV, which was designed with asymmetric and racemic 2-ethylhexyl side-chains explicitly to make the polymer more glassy (i.e. homogeneous) in the solid state as well as to improve the solubility.

What are the applications of polymer solar cells?

The potential applications of polymer solar cells are broad, ranging from flexible solar modules and semitransparent solar cells in windows, to building applications and even photon recycling in liquid-crystal displays.

Should solar cells be packaged in heavy glass?

“Encasing these solar cells in heavy glass, as is standard with the traditional silicon solar cells, would minimize the value of the present advancement, so the team is currently developing ultrathin packaging solutions that would only fractionally increase the weight of the present ultralight devices,” says Mwaura.

How are solar panels made?

They are one-hundredth the weight of conventional solar panels, generate 18 times more power-per-kilogram, and are made from semiconducting inks using printing processes that can be scaled in the future to large-area manufacturing. Because they are so thin and lightweight, these solar cells can be laminated onto many different surfaces.