Mechanically-Informed Design of Flexible Solar Cells: Coupled Deformation–Efficiency Modeling

Abstract

The Flexible solar cells are the most potential type of solar cells to enable wearable, foldable, and conformable energy harvesting systems. Therefore, mechanical fragility and strain-induced performance loss remain scientifically challenging limitations for their large-scale deployment. A new mechanically informed design framework is developed in this work that clearly couples deformation mechanics with a photovoltaic efficiency model capable of predicting strain-driven degradation as well as accounting explicitly for it. A typical architecture of perovskite-based flexible solar cells is analyzed using integrated finite element simulations together with a strain-dependent drift-diffusion model. The mechanical module solves stress/strain distributions due to bending/stretching/cyclic loads while the electrical module contains constitutive relations between local strains and bandgap shifts; mobility changes (variation) in carrier transport; recombination dynamics(parameters). Direct importation (feeding) deformation fields into an electronic solver allows mapping at what scales(load scale or device scale) does charge transport & power conversion efficiency get affected by load. The results find optimum substrate modulus, active-layer thickness, and kirigami-inspired geometric design that reduce peak strain and increase fatigue life (mechanically resilient photovoltaic architecture) to provide clear guidelines. This work proposes a framework to fill the critical gap between material mechanics and solar-cell physics by framing an approach pathway for next-generation flexible solar cells with high durability, stability, and energy performance through a predicted design.