A team of scientists has developed a powerful new coating that could make solar panels much better at capturing sunlight—and it’s so thin, it’s almost invisible.
Their innovation could help solar energy become more efficient and more widely used.
Solar panels work by turning sunlight into electricity.
But there’s a problem: when sunlight hits the surface of a typical flat silicon solar cell, nearly half of it bounces off and is lost.
For years, researchers have tried to solve this issue using antireflective coatings, which help reduce the amount of light that reflects off the surface.
However, traditional coatings only work well for certain types of light and when the sunlight hits at specific angles.
In a new study published in Advanced Photonics Nexus, researchers have created a new type of antireflective coating that performs much better.
Instead of using multiple layers or complex structures, they designed a single ultrathin layer of tiny silicon structures—known as a “metasurface”—that reduces reflection across a wide range of light and angles.
This smart surface design uses advanced computer simulations, including artificial intelligence, to optimize the shape and pattern of the nanostructures for the best results.
The result is a coating that reflects just 2% of sunlight when it hits straight on, and only about 4.4% even when the sunlight comes in at sharp angles. That’s a huge improvement over existing technologies, especially considering it uses just one layer of material.
This means more of the sunlight that hits a solar panel can actually be converted into electricity, which increases the panel’s efficiency without making the technology more expensive or complicated.
Because the design is simple and uses materials already common in solar panels, it has the potential to be adopted quickly in the solar industry.
The benefits of this breakthrough may extend beyond solar energy. The same method of designing nanostructured surfaces could help improve other technologies that use light—like optical sensors, cameras, and communication devices.
In short, by using a precision-designed layer of tiny structures, scientists have found a way to help solar panels capture more sunlight and waste less energy. This could play a big role in advancing clean, renewable power in the near future.
Source: SPIE.
