Flexible, efficient solar-battery nano-textile

太阳能是清洁和丰富的，但它只提供了我们能源使用的一小部分，主要是由于目前的制造和安装成本。这突出了对创新材料和工程解决方案的经济和环境要求，以低成本将太阳能收集设备整合到窗帘或服装等消费产品中，以期降低制造、安装和储存成本。这一战略项目的目标是开发关键的良性和高可用性纳米材料和制造技术，用于可伸缩的卷对卷(R2R)制造高效聚合物太阳能电池和灵活的“清洁能源纺织品”形式的充电电池。来自不列颠哥伦比亚省的具有该领域专业知识的多学科研究人员小组将与三个国际机构(剑桥大学、西澳州立大学、霍尔斯特中心)和两家加拿大公司(MW Canada，NEW)合作，协同开展这一研究项目。将新型石墨烯/纳米纤维柔性透明电极、电子和空穴选择涂层、新型低带隙聚合物异质结和等离子体粒子集成在一起，将开发出高效串联聚合物太阳能集热装置。与石墨烯和纳米纤维电极集成的生物基柔性固态聚合物电解质将被研究用于织物基板上的大容量、可充电和柔性锂离子电池。将开发出在可拉伸和粗糙的纤维结构上印刷和层压太阳能和电池器件的高精度工艺，并将展示太阳能电池纳米纺织品的原型。这项工作有助于通过集成到日常消费产品中来大幅降低太阳能收集和存储设备的成本，并为纺织和印刷行业开发增值产品的战略技术，为加拿大带来重大潜在好处。

Solar energy is clean and abundant; yet it only provides a tiny fraction of our energy usage mainly due to the current manufacturing and installation costs. This highlights an economical and environmental call for innovative materials and engineering solutions for low-cost integration of solar harvesting devices into consumer products such as window drapes or clothing with the aim to decrease manufacturing, installation and storage costs. This strategic project targets development of key benign and high availability nanomaterials and fabrication technologies for scalable roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing of high efficiency polymer solar cells and rechargeable batteries in form of flexible "clean energy textiles". A multidisciplinary team of researchers from UBC with demonstrated expertise in the field, in collaboration with three international institutions (Cambridge, WSU, Holst Centre) and two Canadian companies (MW Canada, NEW) will synergistically approach this research project. High efficiency tandem polymer solar harvesting devices will be developed integrated from novel graphene/nanofiber flexible transparent electrodes, electron- and hole- selective coatings, novel low bandgap polymer heterojunctions, and plasmonic particles. Bio-based flexible solid-state polymer electrolytes, integrated with graphene and nanofiber electrodes will be investigated for high capacity, rechargeable and flexible Li-ion batteries on fabric substrates. High precision processes for printing and lamination of developed solar and battery devices on stretchable and rough fibrous structure will be developed, and prototype solar-battery nano-textile will be demonstrated. This work contributes to dramatically lowering the cost of solar harvesting and storage devices by integration in daily-used consumer products and develops strategic technologies for value-added products for textile and printing industries with major potential benefits for Canada.