Wood Cellulose Paper for Solar Cells

Large material usage and high production cost restrict the widespread use of solar cells in our society as a clean energy source. A feasible way toward inexpensive solar cells is root in our ability to fabricate solar cells on cheap substrates as the substrate represents 25%–60% of total material costs in current solar cells. Recent efforts to develop solar cells on low cost, flexible, renewable, biodegradable, and versatile paper have rendered encouraging and intriguing results. Paper can not only be taken as a promising substrate to support various solar cells, but also can act as functional elements such as light management layer to improve the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of solar cells. The following sections summarize up-to-date progress on the solar cells fabricated on both common and emerging paper substrates and identify the major challenges for paper solar cells that need to be overcome before they can move from the laboratory to industry. Among these reports, a highest 6.7% PCE to date for solar cells on common paper is reported. Paper solar cells demonstrated their potential application in low-cost and disposable paper electronics as a power source. Possible applications include gadgets, product tracking, smart parcels, security identification, and copy protect.