Queen Mary, University of London and Power Roll Limited KTP 24_25 R2

A new optical analysis tool will be built directly into the production line for flexible solar film, allowing manufacturers to test novel materials in real time without stopping the process. This matters because today’s lightweight solar films—thin, bendable sheets that can be stuck onto roofs, vehicles, or building facades—are still too expensive and inefficient to compete with rigid silicon panels. A major bottleneck is the slow, off-line testing of new materials: researchers must make a sample, remove it, run it through separate instruments, and wait days for results. The in-situ optical equipment being developed here will measure how a material absorbs and converts light while the film is still being manufactured, cutting evaluation time from days to minutes. If the project succeeds, it could accelerate the commercial rollout of cheap, flexible solar film. That would make solar power easier to install on surfaces that cannot support heavy glass panels—warehouse roofs, car roofs, even curved building cladding—and could lower the cost of distributed energy generation. The work is applied, not fundamental: the goal is a specific industrial process, not a new scientific principle.