Solar Cells Created 100 Times Smaller Than A Hair

 The overall harnessing and grasping control of the power in the sky which makes a nuclear reactor like a AAA battery, the Sun, has been the paradigm of study of countless fields of science for centuries. Currently solar power utilization is higher than recorded history thereof; with surplus of such extensive availability certain parts of the country are giving it away free of any charge. Yet the true harnessing of any energy or plasma goes beyond any two or even three dimensional realm of thinking. We must either peel back the layer of that dogmatic box or simply dwell deeper and thus smaller beyond what fundamental solar paneling on rooftops has nonetheless abundantly yielded. We therefore look to the solar cells which compose this energy for us to harness and endeavor to control like any other element: water, earth, air or even the very rotation of the earth itself. It was this very out-of-the-box thinking that produced into the modern world of science a new flexible, ultra-thin photovoltaic cell created by researchers in South Korea. The nature of these cells is so flexible they can verily be wrapped around a single pencil; and smaller objects still. The flexibility has been proven to wrap around a diameter of no thicker than 1 millimeter.

“Our photovoltaic is about 1 micrometre thick,” words of engineer, Jongho Lee, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology.

In the concordant relation of standard layered thickness of solar panels as we now use them, photovoltaic cells are calculably hundreds of times thinner; with even the human strand of hair 10 to up to 200 micrometers thick.

Innovations opened for such lightweight and meteoric versatility goes even beyond simple mobile/electronic devices such as mobile phone or laptops, but that of also clothes and fabrics; giving such even still regular and commonplace articles of human society the option of element proof energy adaptation wherever one goes; simply by putting on a shirt, slipping on a sandal or wearing your own prescription glasses.

The material which the team of scientists therein used for their product was a substance known as gallium arsenide, a semiconductor. The cells for the solar to energy conductivity are stamped onto the substrate directly. A cold-welding process forms the actual cells to the electrodes in which a metal layer placed underneath the cells upon the photovoltaic membrane reflects the stray or loose photons in which are concordantly absorbed back onto the photovoltaic panels.

The applied Physics Letters based in the testing of the researchers of the innovation in solar energy tested that cells of this caliber in of such ultra-thin material reached a calculated ability to wrap around an object with a radius measured as small as 1.4 millimeters. The strain in which the photovoltaic cells experienced when wrapped to such a small radius in comparison to other thin solar cells was only about 25% of the strain as otherwise documented. These other cells had a standard thickness of 3.5 micrometers. Photovoltaic solar cells, as aforementioned, had a thickness of only 1 micrometer. That’s the difference between a laptop that is as thick as an inch to a laptop as thick as 3 and a half inches. So although the measurements are quite smaller on this scale of relativity, the observational logic of innovation in efficiency and therefore thickness is a quantifiable significance of great extremity.

“The thinner cells are less fragile under bending, but perform similarly or even slightly better,” –said Lee.

Earlier this year society and the science world did in fact bear witness to a solar cell and the adaptation of making them as thin as possible. In its success, the solar cell was so thin that the base matter of an actual soap bubble did not break down due to the thin cell resting directly upon it. Such a marvel would be quite note-worthy and pose a type of innovational threat to the team. However, the solar cells of this function were in fact so incredibly then, that their usability was diminished to that of practically nothing; rendering the concept interesting, but ultimately moot.

“If you breathe too hard, you might blow it away,” Said one upon the team at MIT, Joel Jean.

Scientists are not interested in the props for which make a cool movie. Although solar panels this small, or skateboards that hover or flying cars, are concepts of no small amount of heightened interest, to either the nerd teenager in high school or to an MIT specialist themselves, the idea of science is for practical application. Inasmuch as making a solar call as small as possible in a leap of great length, efficiency and the pragmatic application to making something therefore “work” is of a far greater importance. Therefore, it is of great importance we recognize the breakthrough of photovoltaic cells because such technology is likely to propel our society and its highly technological dependency to what we may postulate as lasting energy for your 3 hour battery life on your laptop to that of weeks if not months or even years of use; abandoning all those trying times you walk into Starbucks or your local coffee house to find all the electrical outlets taken. Or, for that matter, having a vital or even an emergency call on your phone to hear that dreaded notification sound indicating a low battery, these solar cells could presumably help in the saving of lives: medical use; law enforcement; fire and rescue.

Stanford University scientists are the souls and minds in whose talent for innovation have led to the development of solar cells which can absorb the light of the sun into energy much more effectively. Using what are known as “nano-wires’ that makes contact with the upper metal of the call actually invisible, it thusly permits the unimpeded cell to take in far more amounts of sunlight to convert to energy.

No longer than one month prior a team of researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia were adopted into the infamous book of world records in their success of building photovoltaic cells that harvested more than one third (34.5%) of solar energy in the total absence of concentrators. The previous record was 24%. The marvelous technique splits the incoming light from the sun four ways, thus allowing a greater field for energy conversion and solar absorption.

“This encouraging result shows that there are still advances to come in photovoltaic research to make solar cells even more efficient,” Mark Keevers, researcher: spoke this when the record was delivered to the public. “Extracting more energy from every beam of sunlight is critical to reducing the cost of electricity generated by solar cells as it lowers the investment needed, and delivering payback faster.”

The absolute nature of this advancement in what a technological marvel it is to see the harvesting of raw solar energy take a form of such innovation is awesome. Our minds and creative nature as humans are what propels science fiction. But, it is this very use of perhaps now an entertaining paradigm what induces even innovative minds to think outside even their own cognitive boxes. Science fiction, after all, being a precursor to science fact, is why we have things like wireless interlinking, mobile devices and now, as it seems, one day self-driving cars. And with this conversion of efficient and, more importantly, clean energy, perhaps our dependency of fossil fuels will one day be diminished or even expunged. Time will tell, as time has hitherto thus shown.