Âé¶¹´«Ã½

Technology

Pliable solar cells are on a roll

By Fred Pearce

15 December 2004

IMAGINE wearing a jacket or rucksack that charges up your mobile phone while you take a walk. Or a tent whose flysheet charges batteries all day so campers can have light all night. Or a roll-out plastic sheet you can place on a car’s rear window shelf to power a child’s DVD player.

Such applications could soon become a reality thanks to a light, flexible solar panel that’s a little thicker than photographic film and can easily be applied to everyday fabrics. The thin, bendy solar panels, which could be on the market within three years, are the fruit of…

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