POWERFILM INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A18-067

Description

Currently packable panels are made from low efficiency light-weight Amorphous Silicon or carbon fiber backed crystalline silicon. The weakness of the amorphous silicon technology resides in the power conversion efficiency (watts per unit area), while the carbon fiber backed crystalline silicon cells lack field durability, flexibility and are bulky. The solution to this problem is to take the benefits of the two different technologies and combine them to produce a solar fabric that has high power conversion and ultra flexibility. This is accomplished by cutting down high efficiency solar cells and reassembling them into a series of interconnected solar cells in a tile like structure. This tile like structure resembles that of mosaic tile, a grid of 1cm x 1cm or 2cm x 2cm solar cells series and parallel connected. The tile like structure of solar cells is encapsulated with a very thin laminate and is bonded to a ultra-lite flexible fabric. This process creates a very light weight, high efficiency, ultra flexible solar module. This contract will take the proof of concept prototypes from the phase 1 contract to manufacturable Ultra-flexible solar modules ready for DOD use.