Group creates optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities: Solar-
power clothes next? New technology can be woven together, could
lead to solar fabrics In what looks like a major breakthrough
for solar technology, researchers have created a fully-flexible,
silicon-based, optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities that
can be scaled to several feet in length. Coiled strand of a
three-feet-long solar-cell junction fiber, thinner than the
width of a human hair. The findings come from an international
group of chemists, physicists, and engineers, led by John
Badding, a professor of chemistry at Penn State University.
Their work was published in the journal Advanced Materials.
Building upon a previous breakthrough The new fiber was built
using a process the group developed earlier that addressed the
issue of merging optical fibers with electronic chips. What they
decided to do was, rather than try to merge a flat chip with a
round optical fiber, they built an optical fiber with its own
integrated electronic componen