Solar Power Game-Changer: “Near Perfect” Absorption of Sunlight, From All Angles
November 4, 2008 by editor
Filed under Research, Technology
A new antireflective coating developed by researchers at Rensselaer could help to overcome two major hurdles blocking the progress and wider use of solar power. The nanoengineered coating, pictured here, boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire spectrum of sunlight from any angle, regardless of the sun's position in the sky.
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a new method for overcoming two major hurdles facing solar energy. By developing a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle, the research team has moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power.
“To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky,” said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university’s Future Chips Constellation, who led the research project. “Our new antireflective coating makes this possible.”
Results of the year-long project are explained in the paper “Realization of a Near Perfect Antireflection Coating for Silicon Solar Energy,” published this week by the journal Optics Letters.
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New Methods Slice Solar Power Costs
University of Utah mechanical engineers Dinesh Rakwal and Eberhard Bamberg watch as an electrified molybdenum wire cuts a thin wafer of germanium semiconductor, which is used in a solar power cells. Their new cutting technique promises to reduce the cost of the most efficient type of solar power cell.
New Method Cuts Waste in Making Most Efficient Solar Cells
Sept. 15, 2008 - University of Utah engineers devised a new way to slice thin wafers of the chemical element germanium for use in the most efficient type of solar power cells. They say the new method should lower the cost of such cells by reducing the waste and breakage of the brittle semiconductor.
The expensive solar cells now are used mainly on spacecraft, but with the improved wafer-slicing method, “the idea is to make germanium-based, high-efficiency solar cells for uses where cost now is a factor,” particularly for solar power on Earth, says Eberhard “Ebbe” Bamberg, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “You want to do it on your roof.”
