Traditional solar panels are made through high-heat or wetting processes that would fry or soak paper. Gleason and her collaborators have developed a method they call vapor printing, which allows them to lay down the conductive material at moderate temperatures. She compared it to the process used to create the metallic inner layer of a potato chip bag.
Printing solar cells onto something as cheap, lightweight, and easy to manipulate as paper, rather than using heavy glass panels, means the process might be used to give cellphones, calculators, and other small electronic devices the ability to generate at least some of their own power.
The same technique could be used on fabric to make, say, curtains that can collect and generate energy from the sun, said Gleason, who is also associate dean of engineering for research.
Gleason’s work, along with other solar-energy research at MIT, is funded by the Italian energy company Eni. Researchers around the world are searching for ways to advance photovoltaic technology, from laying down single crystals to films of living cells. Their aim is to find a clean source of energy with the reliability and low cost of the power grid, but which is also flexible and cheap enough to be used on remote devices and in the developing world.
Gleason’s edge is that she can print her cells quickly and inexpensively, said Shriram Ramanathan, an associate professor of materials science at Harvard University.
Max Shtein, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan, said the work has potential for making textiles extremely water-repellent. They could also serve as a surface for the materials used to create organic semiconductors, which are being explored for their potential to build devices that are flexible or even transparent, he said.
