14
Absorbing sunlight , household light
Flexible solar panels offer opportunity
Story-Rosaire Bushey
Mechanical Engineering
In the very near future , recycling light energy may be easier than recycling any other item in your house .
Led by Shashank Priya , the Robert E . Hord Jr . Professor of Mechanical Engineering , a team of mechanical and materials engineers and chemists at Virginia Tech , including post-doctoral researchers Xiaojia Zheng and Congcong Wu , as well as College of Science chemistry Professor Robert Moore and Assistant Professor Amanda Morris , is producing flexible solar panels that can become part of window shades or wallpaper that will capture light from the sun as well as light from sources inside buildings .
Solar modules less than half-a-millimeter thick are being created through a screen-printing process using low-temperature titanium oxide paste as part of a five-layer structure that creates thin , flexible panels similar to tiles in one ’ s bathroom . These tiles to get solar power off the roof and onto walls , curtains , clothing ...
can be combined together to cover large areas ; an individual panel , roughly the size of a person ’ s palm , provides about 75 milliwatts of power , meaning a panel the size of a standard sheet of paper could easily recharge a typical smart phone .
Most silicon-based panels can absorb only sunlight , but the flexible panels are constructed to be able to absorb diffused light , such as that produced by LED , incandescent , and fluorescent fixtures , according to Priya .
“ There are several elements that make the technology very appealing ,” said Priya . “ First , it can be manufactured easily at low temperature , so the equipment to fabricate the panels is relatively inexpensive and easy to operate . Second , the scalability of being able to create the panels in sheet rolls means you could wallpaper your home in these panels to run everything from your alarm system , to recharging