Two men are sitting on a plane leaning over a napkin. The napkin is full of scribbles, though it just might be the recipe for something the world has never seen before: a solar cell that can be integrated into any device.
In 2009, Giovanni Fili founded the Swedish clean tech company Exeger. The initial idea was to create a transparent solar cell to cover skyscrapers with tinted solar windows. Because in warmer climates windows are already tinted, Giovanni wanted to take advantage of the unwanted light to generate clean energy for use inside the buildings.
That idea turned into something else during a plane trip with Henrik Lindström, one of the pioneers of the dye-sensitized solar cell industry. As a chemist and technical scientist with a doctorate in battery and dye-sensitised solar cell research. Dr Lindström was the perfect partner to Fili who stems from an entrepreneurial background with a Master of Sciences in Business and Administration with a double major in Finance and Information Management from the Stockholm School of Economics
Fili and Lindström brought their minds together to develop a new solar cell material. It has 1 000 times better conductivity than the electrode material found in other solar cells and is layered under the light absorbing surface. This absorbing layer is where we typically see silver connecting lines in other solar technologies.
“In regular solar cells, if you don't have those silver lines, the panel heats up and doesn't produce energy,” says Alexandre Faust, the Head of Communication at Exeger. "Our solar cells don't need those lines because the solar cell itself conducts the electricity so well.”
Exeger produces a flexible material based on the dye-sensitised solar cell technology, making it very efficient in converting indoor and outdoor light into electricity. The material can be incorporated into everyday devices, so that they charge on natural or artificial light. This can lead to products that no longer need to rely on disposable batteries, like the 3M Peltor product recently launched on the market.
“Because we don't need those silver lines, suddenly we can do pretty much anything we want when it comes to design,” says Faust. “We can make solar cells that are triangular or the shape of a fruit. We can also make them in any texture. That gives our customers a lot of freedom.”