Foldable solar cells: Structure design and flexible materials

Abstract

Foldable solar cells, with the advantages of size compactness and shape transformation, have promising applications as power sources in wearable and portable electronics, building and vehicle integrated photovoltaics. However, in contrast to mild bending with curvature radius of several millimeters, folding generates the crease with extreme curvature radius of sub‐millimeter, resulting in the appearance of large strain and stress. As a result, it is highly challenging to realize robustly foldable and highly efficient solar cells. Here, we summarize the recent progress on the photovoltaic performance and mechanical robustness of 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. 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.

Realization of Highly Foldable Conductive Substrates with 2000 Cyclic Mechanical Stability through Silver Nanowires/Cellulose Structure Design

“…Foldable electronics, with the advantages of size compactness and shape transformation, are promising for portable and wearable applications. − In contrast to mild bending, which forms a smooth curve with a radius of several millimeters, folding generates the crease with a curvature radius of sub-millimeter, resulting in the appearance of a large strain . Therefore, it is challenging to realize foldable devices.…”