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Researchers at the University of South Florida have developed solar cells that are one-fourth the size of a grain of rice. When 20 of them are grouped together in an array, they can generate about 7.8 volts of electricity.
While 7.8 volts doesn't sound like much, the potential applications for these tiny cells are pretty cool. The cells are made of an organic polymer that can be dissolved or applied to flexible materials instead of the usual brittle silicon wafers. This flexibility plus their small size would allow them to be sprayed or painted onto surfaces like houses, cars, clothing or anything that is exposed to sunlight.
Head researcher Xiaomei Jiang is working towards one use in particular for these tiny arrays: powering microscopic chemical sensors for soldiers in the field. Batteries are heavy for soldiers to carry and they also cost the military about $57,000 per soldier per year. Having a small, renewable source of power for these types of devices would be in the military and the soldiers' interests.
Jiang is currently working to double the electricity output of these cells, hopefully enough to power the chemical sensors. He believes this is possible within months.
via Wired and Reuters
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written by Aaron, November 11, 2008
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written by Jacob, November 12, 2008
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written by Clinch, November 12, 2008
Also, wouldn't it be better for soldier to have just one (or a small number of) high efficiency solar panels on them, rather than a load of tiny inefficient ones?
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written by Jack, March 07, 2009
The main advantage of these cells is that they are flexible, and still give a 12% efficiency. Thus, these are much more useful than regular solar cells.
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It's nice that they are reseaching organic solar cells (which do give you some flexibility in how/where they are applied), but this is nothing special.
First of all, a 7 Volt solar cell doesn't mean much, unless you also know the current. The current on this thing must be miniscule, since it's tiny in size, and not very efficient. And unless you concentrate the light first (which is NOT done here), you don't gain any performance advantages by making them smaller. All you're doing is decreasing the amount of light they can collect.
Also, anyone can make 7 V by hooking together enough cells of any kind in series to make 7 V. Nothing new there.