High efficiency, cost effective solar panels have gotten just a little closer. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have just discovered and actually demonstrated a method for applying a new antireflective coating that will reduce glare and therefore increase the amount of sunlight aborbed.
This coating not only cuts down glare, but allows light to be absorbed from every angle. A standard untreated silicon solar cell only aborbs about 67.4 percent of sunlight that hits it. Thats almost 1/3 of the sunlight being reflected away and not able to be used. After treatment with this new coating, the same silicon chip can aborb 96.21 percent of light, only losing just over 3% to reflection. The gain in absorbtion is consistent across th entire spectrum.
Shawn-Yu Lin was the leader of the project that pushed this reasearch along. Lin is a professor physics at Rensselaer and a mamber of Future Chips Constellation.
Funding for the project was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, as well as the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
