SOLAR PANELS POISED TO REVOLUTIONISE GREEN ENERGY

 The sustainability dream is one step closer to becoming possible thanks to Polish businesswoman and physicist Olga Malinkiewicz.

The 36-year old has invented an innovative inkjet processing technique for perovskites, the latest generation of less expensive solar cells that allows the production of solar panels with lower temperatures, thereby dramatically cutting cost.

In fact, perovskite technology could be set to revolutionize the availability of solar energy to all due to its awe-inspiring physical properties, experts claim.

Solar panels that are coated with the mineral are thin and flexible, they are also cheap and come in different colors and levels of transparency.

They can be easily attached to virtually any surface whether it's the car, laptop drone, spacecraft, or a building to generate electricity, even under shade or indoors.

Although the excitement is brand fresh, perovskite was discovered by scientists in the 1830s at the earliest at the time it was recognized through the work of German mineralogist Gustav Rose while prospecting in the Ural mountains. The name was derived from Russian mineralogist Lev Perovskite.

In the next decade in the following decades, synthesizing the perovskite atomic structure became much easier.

However, it wasn't until the year 2009 when Japanese research scientist Tsutomu Miyasaka found the possibility of using perovskites to make solar cells with photovoltaic power.

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- 'Bull's eye' -

The process was initially complicated and required extremely high temperatures. Only materials that we're able to withstand extreme temperatures -- such as glass -can be coated using perovskite cells.

This is the point at which Malinkiewicz comes in.

In 2013, as a doctoral student studying at the University of Valencia in Spain, she came up with how to paint elastic foils with perovskites through an evaporation process.

In the following years, she created an inkjet printing method that reduced the cost of production enough to enable mass production economically.

"That was a bull's eyes. Today, high temperatures are no longer needed to protect things from an electro-photovoltaic coating," Malinkiewicz told AFP.

Her research quickly led to an article published in Nature and the media's attention, in addition to her winning the Photonics21 Student Innovation prize in a competition held by the European Commission.

The Polish edition of the MIT Technology Review also selected her among its top Innovators under 35 in 2015.

She later co-founded Saule Technologies, a company she cofounded. Saule Technologies -- named in honor of her name, which is the Baltic sun god together with two Polish businessmen.

They needed to put together the entire lab equipment completely from scratch before millionaire Japanese investment Hideo Sawada joined the team.

The company is now operating an ultra-modern laboratory that is staffed by an international group of young professionals and is currently building an industrial-scale manufacturing facility.

"This is the first production line in the world that utilizes this technology. The capacity of the line will grow to the size of 40,000 square meters of panels before the close of the year, in the year and 180,000 square meters in the next calendar year." Malinkiewicz said at her laboratory.

"But that's just a drop in the bucket in terms of demand."

In the future, small production lines can be set up anywhere, based on the demand for solar panels with perovskite designed to order.

Self-sufficient building -

The Swedish construction firm Skanska is testing cutting-edge panels that will be used on the façade on one of their structures in Warsaw.

It also signed a licensing agreement together with Saule in December, which gives Saule the sole right to use its solar cell technology in its projects across Europe as well as in the United States and Canada.

"Perovskites have been successful on surfaces that receive very little sunlight. We can use them all over the place," he told AFP.

"More and less transparent these panels adapt to the design needs. Due to their flexibility and the varying shades, there's no need to include any additional design elements."

A typical panel of about 1.3 square meters, with an estimated price of fifty euros ($57) is enough to provide one day's worth of power to a workstation in the office according to current estimates.

Malinkiewicz claims that the price of her solar panels will be comparable to the cost of conventional solar panels.

Perovskite technology is currently being tested at a hotel in Japan near Nagasaki.

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