The solar textile challenge: how it will not work and where it might

Solar textiles are highlighted as a future technology with transformative power within the fields of both textiles and solar cells provided that developments are made in critical areas. Specifically, these are fundamental solutions to materials and material combinations with mechanical stability and flexibility imposed by textile architectures, scientific solutions to achieve high carrier transport efficiency and optical transmission in a textile topology, technical solutions to controlling the physical disposition of the anode and cathode along with their specific and error-free contacting and, finally, practical solutions to fast and efficient manufacture and integration. The areas of application and the penetration of solar textiles into our everyday life are expected to be explosive pending efficient developments within these four key areas. A shortcoming in one or more of these will, however, lead to the solar textiles being banned to academic existence.