Transformable crystalline silicon photovoltaics

Abstract

Transformable photovoltaics (TPVs) have been attracting much attention because of the limitation of the PV’s installation and a continuous power source for the portable and wearable electronic devices. At present, TPVs have been developed based on the perovskite and organic photovoltaics. However, these PVs have problems of the low efficiency and instability. In contrast, crystalline silicon (c-Si) PVs exhibit high efficiency and stability, but they are not able to be transformable because they tend to be fragile when an external force is applied. Therefore, a new strategy for the TPVs technology based on the crystalline silicon is required to realize the high efficiency and stable c-Si TPVs. In this research, we developed the c-Si TPVs through the interdigitated back contact (IBC) structured c-Si module and introduction of a stretchable electrode. Because all electrodes (positive and negative contact) of the IBC PVs are positioned on the rear side, we can easily fabricate the TPVs module using the stretchable electrode. The stretchable electrode is consisting of the combination of the carbon materials and elastic polymer. The stretchable carbon filler/ polymer composite is found to effectively retain its electrical conductivity, even when under the high strain of ≈200%. Due to the outstanding electrical conductivity and highly stretchable property of the carbon filler/ polymer composites, the fabricated IBC PVs can be transformable without the efficiency degradation. Thus, we expect that the proposed c-Si TPVs are possible to overcome the PV’s installation limitation and integrate with flexible or wearable electronic devices for the continuous power source.