Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

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.