"The polymer solar cell is able to retain 97% of its performance after 2,000 hours in air. By blending small-molecule acceptors into polymeric matrices, the research team improved molecular packing, enhancing both stability and charge transport for “ultra-stable” flexible devices.
It will be interesting to see if & how quickly this can be translated into commercially available solar tech. If this isn't a final breakthrough for polymer solar, it's certainly bringing it one step closer.
This is why solar energy will conquer the world, and all the other energy options are dead men walking. It's already the cheapest energy source in most of the world in 2026, and it will be an order of magnitude cheaper when next-gen solar tech like this comes online.
Another consequence of polymer solar tech? It is vastly easier to manufacture. China will lose a structural advantage there. By the 2030s, poorer parts of the world could be churning this stuff out at a massive scale and for a small cost. A hopeful vision for the future.
Scientists build ‘ultra-stable’ polymer solar cell with 19.1% efficiency
Solar energy has yet to get an order of magnitude even cheaper than it is today. Researchers claim a technology breakthrough in polymer solar cells; cheap & easy to manufacture solar cells that can be printed on rolls of plastic.
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
8 Comments
>Solar energy has yet to get an order of magnitude even cheaper than it is today.
But solar is already an order of magnitude even cheaper than it is today.
The article states a 100,000 hour lifetime, which is a bit over 11 years. Most solar cells retain 80-90% of their efficiency over that time, these cells lose 3% of their efficiency in 2000 hours of air exposure, which is ***83 days***.
They better be ***very cheap*** if you’d need to buy 3 generations of them to compete with existing solar panels.
Modern Solar Panels are expensive as fuck. Everyone who says otherwise is ideologically captured or has a skin in the game due to selling said panels. Plus if you want to move out it’s a PIA cause you have to either pay off the loan for the panels or see if the buyer wants to buy your loan out. That’s the real cost of solar. If you can make the panels as expensive as a Fridge or an AC you will probably see an uptick in solar panels.
EDIT: The comments are proving my point. All the replies are but actually if you do this DIY thing it isn’t that expensive. Here’s the thing until John Walmart can go to an appliance store and buy Solar Panels and is able to just plug it won’t be as popular. People here are looking this from a low level well the reason is because X or Y. You need to look at the bigger picture and look at this from a POV of a Normal family dad or mom. I’m saying that it needs to become as simple as buying an appliance for this to be massively owned. And before someone say that’s impossible, that is wrong. It might be impossible today but it might be possible tomorrow.
So, where do I buy it?
Over and over I see this tech that tech but it’s always an image and a lot of words. I can never buy it. I can never put it to work. it’s always part of some company projects. It’s never available for regular people to use.
So long as every innovation is gatekept by copyrights and people unwilling to sell to the public, the advancements might as well not exist. So long as it’s just another future tech we never advance.
It sounds amazing, even if it degrades much faster than traditional silica PV. But made of plastic, I’m less worried about generating capacity and more worries about them literally disintegrating after a few years in direct sunlight. UV is gnarly on organic material
> China will lose a structural advantage there. By the 2030s, poorer parts of the world could be churning this stuff out at a massive scale and for a small cost. A hopeful vision for the future.
But this tech was created in Wuhan, China. Why would any other country be churning it out without licensing from the Chinese company?
Man, I’ve kicked around the idea of getting solar at home for a decade or longer but it always feels like we’re on the cusp of some breakthrough on panel or battery tech that would render the current tech obsolete.
Also, most of the solar companies I’ve seen locally feel like fly by night scams.
I continue to play the waiting game.
In California at least, the whole thing is a scam. I pay more with solar than I ever did without (new home).