Fiber-shaped flexible solar cells

Flexible solar cells with the advantages of lightweight, foldability, and low cost, and extensive applications have attracted much academic interest and industrial attention during the last decades. The principles, development, and characteristics of various silicon based, CuInGaSe, dye-sensitized, and organic photovoltaic flexible solar cells are introduced and reviewed. Special emphasis gives different types of the newly and rapidly developed fiber-shaped solar cells and their characteristics. Compared with traditional ones, the fiber-shaped solar cells use flexible photoelectrodes prepared with low-cost metal wire, optical fibers, and carbon etc., not only greatly expanding their flexibility and decreasing cost, but evidently improving their various properties. At last as their further development, some prospective researches on mesh-like solar cells are introduced.