New Solar Cell that Can be Built into Your Clothing!

For most people living in the tropics the sun beating down on them throughout the year can be a little oppressive. What we got here however is a neat bit of technology that thrives in these very conditions. A solar cell that could be embedded in your clothing and can then be used to power a variety of portable electronic gadgets!

Recently we told you about an innovation by a group of scientists from the California Institute of Technology. It was about a cheap, efficient, high quality solar cell that had the potential to revolutionize the industry. This is merely an extension of that technology.

Our previous article on high quality solar cells

The features of this solar cell…

Are quite impressive. What defines it however are its,

Efficiency
High quality
And inexpensiveness

What’s also impressive is that…

This new type of solar cell is only 5% of the size of a conventional solar cell and also it uses only a mere fraction of the expensive silicon material that was used previously to build solar cells.

The extension of this technology that we mentioned before…

Is that it can now be built in to clothing!

How is this achieved?

The scientists involved have developed a ‘silicon wire forest’ for this purpose. For this they have grown micrometer-wide silicon wires on a silicon base. Then this ‘forest’ of silicon wires is covered with the clear silicone polymer polydimethylsiloxane. Once this is set, the silicon wires are cut away from the base, leaving a flexible solar cell.

As a result of all this they have achieved the two fundamental properties required in the solar cell in order to be integrated into clothing: small size and flexibility.

According to the researchers the base can then be used to make a further 30 solar cells.