Ricoh, Komori and Sekisui Chemical Use Roll-to-Roll Inkjet Printing to Make Flexible Solar Cells Thinner Than a Page That Work on Curved Surfaces and Weak Rooftops
Japan is printing solar cells the same way newspapers roll off a press and the results are rewriting what clean energy infrastructure can look like. Jinko Solar Price PK
Using roll-to-roll inkjet printing and perovskite material, Japanese researchers at Fukushima University first demonstrated solar cells just 53 micrometers thick; thinner than a single newspaper page as far back as 2016. A decade later, the technology has reached commercial scale. At Expo 2025 Osaka, a 250-metre roof at the West Gate Bus Terminal became the world’s largest installation of film-type perovskite solar cells, proving real-world viability.
Efficiency has climbed alongside scale. Researchers at Tokyo City University achieved 26.5% efficiency for flexible perovskite-silicon tandem cells in April 2025. Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has recorded 29.3% for triple-junction lab cells. Printing companies Ricoh and Komori backed by Japan’s NEDO Green Innovation Fund are now leading industrial production, with Sekisui Chemical targeting 100 MW capacity by 2027 and gigawatt-scale by 2030.
Japan’s national target is 20 GW of printed perovskite solar cells by 2040 at a cost of just 14 yen per kilowatt-hour. Traditional solar panels need strong, flat rooftops. These can wrap around car roofs, building walls, and curved infrastructure that rigid panels could never reach.
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