July 16 news, according to the Massachusetts Institute

Now most of the latest technology and method of manufacturing solar batteries are very different. The existing technologies need to be exposed to damaging the substrate environment - either to the substrate in liquid form, or exposed to high temperatures; the new technology uses steam rather than liquid, the temperature not to 120 degrees Celsius, The 'relatively modest' environment so that people can commonly not treated paper, cloth, plastic as a substrate on which to print solar batteries.

New technology provides a large-scale low-cost method of manufacturing solar cells. Vapor deposition technique, called ordinary document printing more complex than that, in order to print out on paper a photovoltaic array, you need five layers of material deposited on this paper, and this process must occur in a vacuum.

Latest technology can use ordinary, untreated paper, including printing paper, tissue paper, carbon paper or newspaper, and results are good, even after the paper folded into paper airplanes, on which the solar cell can still work. Scientists also in a thin PET plastic on a piece of printed solar cells, and fold open the 1000, its performance is not affected. In contrast, the method now used commercially to produce solar cells folding time becomes ineffective.

Brinell Rockwell said, with the traditional glass or other material from the substrate than paper or plastic substrate to light a lot, which allowed more extensive applications. In addition, the results also confirmed that last year's printed solar cells are still working, indicating that its life is very long. Moreover, the paper substrate solar cells can be made blackout curtains or wallpaper, and its installation cost is much lower than the glass substrate solar cells.

This paper the latest solar cell conversion efficiency is about 1%, but scientists believe that as they continue to improve the material, conversion efficiency can be greatly improved. 'No matter how the battery is now sufficient to provide electricity for a small device.'

IDTechEx Printed Electronics professional investigative agency said the MIT study is very exciting, many scientists are focused on developing large-scale solar cell, in fact, a small solar cell applications area is also very extensive.