WSIL-TV -- For the last fifty years solar power cells have been flat, rigid and ugly. But the University of Illinois discovered a way to make solar power cells lightweight, flexible, and transparent.We could use solar energy in a lot more places if the panels weren't flat, rigid, and heavy. Materials Engineer John Rogers says that's been a major drawback, until now. He's figured out a way to make them more convenient.
"If you look at a conventional silicon solar panel it's relatively heavy, it 's mechanically rigid, it's fragile, you can't bend it, it's opaque, you can 't see through it. And so our work here is to address those limitations," says Rogers.
No one has found a better material than silicon for generating power from sunlight. But Rogers and his team at the University of Illinois invented a way to use ultra-thin slices of material... read more
No comments:
Post a Comment