Imagine solar panels so thin and pliable that you can power all your devices by slapping them onto your house, car, smartphone, and knapsack. That tech could be coming soon, thanks to Oxford University’s physics department, which may have made a major breakthrough that could be consumer-ready in the near future. The tech hinges on a technique that allows multiple layers of light-absorbing material to be packed into a single, ultra-thin solar cell that is just a single micron thick.
For comparison, that’s just 0.00003937 inches, or 0.001 millimeters, or smaller than some bacteria.
Conventional photovoltaics are about 150 times thicker. In a statement , the researchers said this ultra-thin design allows the cells to be applied as a coating, which allows for increased flexibility, without losing efficiency. The scientists will formally reveal their methods for creating the cells, which are made of the mineral perovskite, in a paper that will be published in an academic journal later this year.
The tech has already garnered a certification from Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, which verified they convert 27% of the sunlight that hits them into electricity. That’s a key number, as it matches—or even surpasses —the average efficiency of traditional solar panel materials. “During just five years experimenting with our stacking or multi-junction approach we have raised power conversion efficiency from around 6% to over 27%, close.