Arinna: Solar Energy Reimagined

close up of TMD solar cell with stanford campus in background — *Photo provided by Koosha Nassiri Nazif.*

Ultra lightweight flexible solar panels that are durable, eco-friendly, and low-cost.

About the Technology

*Photograph of WSe2 solar cells on a flexible polyimide substrate. (Image credit: K. Nassiri Nazif)*

Emerging yet rapidly growing markets such as unmanned arial vehicles, low-earth-orbit satellites, electric vehicles, IoT, and wearable electronics urgently demand ultralightweight flexible solar panels that could provide high power-per-weight (specific power). High-specific-power photovoltaic (PV) market is estimated to be >$140B in size, also leading to ~30% reduction in annual greenhouse gas emission. Today’s solar markets are dominated by rigid and bulky silicon solar panels which cannot be used in high-specific-power applications. Thin-film solar cell technologies also suffer from very high cost, low specific power, short lifetime, toxicity, or use of rare materials.

The Arinna team is developing a novel solar panel technology that is ultralightweight, flexible, high-specific-power, durable, low-cost, and ecofriendly. The technology is based on ultrathin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) which possess excellent photovoltaic properties. TMDs have been extensively studied over the past 12 years in the nanoelectronics industry but mostly stayed unnoticed by the photovoltaic community. The team recently demonstrated flexible high-specific-power TMD solar cells achieving specific power on par with established solar technologies, with the potential to achieve 10x higher specific power, which fully addresses the market needs.