Mechanical engineer Shashank Priya along with a team of engineers and chemists have developed a new type of flexible solar panel that can absorb both the direct light of sunlight as well as the diffuse light of LED, fluorescent and incandescent lighting. The super-thin solar module can be produced through a low-temperature, low-cost screen printing technique that churns out the panels in rolls. The solar tiles, which resemble flexible versions of bathroom tiles, can be combined together to make window shades or wallpaper. Just a single tile, about the size of your hand, can produce 75 milliwatts of power. If you put a few together to equal the size of a sheet of paper, you have enough power to recharge a smartphone. The flexible panels at 10 percent efficiency are right behind conventional rigid silicon ones that usually come in around 15 percent efficiency and the researchers believe they'll not only catch up, but surpass their rigid counterparts soon.