Connection techniques of textile wires to the solid and flexible solar cells

In order to make better use of clean energy such as solar energy, textile on earth have the potential to be made into solar textiles. The commercial solar cells can be embedded between the textile layers by laminating to harvest energy for e-textile applications. Research about solar textiles is not mature enough, and many aspects of the problem need to be solved. However, connecting techniques of conductive textile wires to flexible and solid solar cells are not in-deep studied. In addition, solar textile products with these connection technologies must meet washable requirements. To solve the problem of connecting textile wires to flexible and solid solar cells in the production of solar textiles, this study proposes three connection techniques for solar textiles, which are tape, adhesive and stitching based on literature and experimental validation. The feasibility of tape and adhesive methods was analyzed by literature review and the feasibility of stitching method was verified by experiments. The stitching is unapplicable method for solid solar cells that are difficult to penetrate, but applicable for flexible solar cells. The machine-washing durability of solar textile which composed of solar cells with stitch-connected conductive textile wires was verified by experiments. First, the textile wires were joined to flexible solar cells by stitching with the sewing machine and then embedded between fabric layers with TPU-lamination to simulate real set up in e-textile application. The humidity stickers were attached to the surface of solar cells, and it was expected to present solar textile samples with or without water inside. After the machine-washing process is completed, the individual parts of the solar textile sample are disassembled by delamination. For stitching method, after 15 machine wash tests by household washing machines, the performance of the solar cells was hardly affected, and the internal water resistance of the samples was good. The delaminatio