Rigid solar panel technology has given way to a deformable photovoltaic material designed for integration into foldable phones and other devices. An international research team exploited the high transparency and mechanical resilience of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) films to fabricate flexible perovskite solar cells.

Films were layered onto a polyimide substrate and doped with molybdenum oxide to improve its conductivity. The material was used to synthesize a solar cell just 7 µm thick that could fold to a radius of 0.5 mm. The films were demonstrated to withstand over 10,000 folding cycles without breaking and to have excellent photovoltaic performance with a power conversion efficiency of 15.2% and 80% transparency at 700 nm.

Scientists from Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Seoul National University (South Korea), Pusan National University (South Korea), Aalto University (Finland) and University of Tokyo contributed to this research, which is published in Advanced Science.

Source: Pusan National University