Solar fabric allows you to charge your phone with your shirt.

This Solar fabric allows you to charge your phone with your shirt.Solar energy is becoming ever more widespread, with panels going up not only on houses and office buildings, but on cars, buses, and road signs. The latest advancement in solar technology will put solar energy on another new and somewhat unexpected surface: people. Not directly on us, though—on our clothes. Scientists are developing wearable energy-smart ribbons that can be woven into fabric, with miniature solar cells to capture and store the sun’s energy. The solar cells don’t look anything like the ones we’re used to seeing on houses or cars. What we can see is a thin copper ribbon, or filament, that has perovskite solar cells on one side and a layer of material acting as a supercapacitor on the other. The copper serves as a shared electrode, directly transferring and storing the charges generated by the perovskite. Most existing solar cells are made of silicon, which requires silica rock to be converted to silicon crystals using ultra-high temperatures. Perovskite is a crystalline material that can be processed in a lab at room temperature for about half the current cost of silicon panels. Perovskite also has a more flexible structure and higher theoretical conversion efficiency than silicon. Perhaps the biggest difference between the copper filament and existing solar technology is that it can store the energy it collects, rather than having to transfer it to the grid or to a battery. So, how might solar clothing be used? Going to the trouble of weaving thin metallic threads into our clothes just so we have a convenient way to charge our phones seems unnecessary (though there are those times it would come in handy!). But what about some more useful applications that would really make it worth mass-producing solar vests or jackets? The area with probably the most potential to put solar clothing to good use is the military. On a typical 72-hour mission, soldiers and marines carry 17 to 30 pounds of batteries with them; that’s on top of the water, gear, and everything else in their packs. Total weight can add up to 70 pounds or more. That’s a lot to carry around, especially for days at a time. Wearable solar technology could provide soldiers with on-the-go power and significantly lighten their packs.continue