Breakthrough Coating: Solar Absorption "Near Perfect"

Written by Philip Proefrock

Tuesday, 27 January 2009

If you've bought a solar panel, you want every photon that lands on it to work towards generating electricity. The more photons you absorb, the more electricity you generate. But, at present, a typical silicon solar cell only absorbs about two-thirds of the sunlight that strikes it, while the remaining third is reflected. Shawn-Yu Lin, a professor of physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has developed an anti-reflective coating (actually seven layers of coating) that raise the absorption of a solar panel to almost 100 percent. A typical silicon solar cell with this anti-reflective coating will absorb 96.21 percent of the sunlight that strikes it, and less than 4% of the light is reflected. ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE AT ECOGEEK.ORG