December 9, 2022 Paper-thin solar cell can turn any surface into a power source MIT engineers have developed ultralight fabric solar cells that can quickly and easily turn any surface into a power source.We strive to accelerate solar adoption, given the present urgent need to deploy new carbon-free sources of energy," says Vladimir Bulović, the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology, leader of the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory (ONE Lab), director of MIT.nano, and senior author of a new paper describing the work.In this work, they set out to develop thin-film solar cells that are entirely printable, using ink-based materials and scalable fabrication techniques."We are working to remove as much of the non-solar-active material as possible while still retaining the form factor and performance of these ultralight and flexible solar structures.For example, we know the manufacturing process can be further streamlined by printing the releasable substrates, equivalent to the process we use to fabricate the other layers in"