Can Injection-Molded Solar Cells Bring Flexibility to Solar Power Generation?

October 27th, 2023

By Jane Marsh

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

If you think of solar panels as heavy, fragile and unwieldy, you’re not alone. Modern photovoltaic panels can weigh more than a border collie — and they’re much less cooperative. They’re also inflexible and cased in glass, making them one job site accident away from shattering.

However, thanks to advances in manufacturing, engineers may have found a solution that makes solar panels light and bendable. Enter injection molding.

What Is Injection Molding?

Before you can understand how injection molding could revolutionize solar energy, it’s important to clarify how the process works and what it’s used for. Injection molding is a manufacturing technique where a technician loads a bunch of plastic pellets — also called polymer granules, with an appearance similar to aquarium gravel — into an injection molding machine.

The machine heats the granules until they melt. Then, it injects the hot, liquid plastic into a mold. The plastic cools down and hardens inside the mold to form its final shape. Once the plastic part solidifies, the machine ejects it.

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