Plastic solar cells can be printed on large rolls of flexible foil. Recently, 100 m-long solar panels were printed. Using these cheap solar panels, only around 1.5% of the energy in the sunlight is converted to electricity. This efficiency is still low compared to the expensive solar panels you can buy now, which can convert 15–20% of the sun's energy into electricity. But the future looks bright. In laboratories around the world, small plastic solar cells are already being made with much higher efficiencies, up to about 12%. One of the tricks to increase the efficiency is adding a special additive to the plastic ink before printing. This special additive was found by accident, but if we want to improve the efficiency of the plastic solar panels even further, we need to know why this special additive works. Understanding how plastic solar cells work is not easy. Many scientists have worked on this topic for years.

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