California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers say that new solar cells can produce same amount of energy as the best conventional solar panels while using less expensive material, TechNewsDaily reports.

New flexible solar cells can absorb up to 85% of the usable incoming sunlight and 95% of incident light. Solar cells can be used more practical, for instance in production of sunroofs and clothes.

“It could be extremely rugged – you could roll it up, even perforate it, shoot holes in it with a gun, and it’d still operate, whereas normal crystalline silicon would just shatter like glass,” the source quotes researcher Harry Atwater, an applied physicist at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena.

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