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.

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.

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 a foldable mini power plant?

Looking like a shipping container at first, this foldable mini power plant that features a solar array can generate up to 50kW of power, guaranteeing a grid-independent electricity supply. It is developed by the German firm Multicon that specializes in mobile off-grid solutions since 2010.

Why is it difficult to develop robustly foldable solar cells?

As a result, cracks will be formed in the functional layers or delamination will be occurred at the interface as soon as the strain exceeds the crack onset strain, leading to the degradation or even failure of the solar cells under repeated folding. Therefore, it is highly challenging to realize robustly foldable solar cells.