It’s been a struggle for solar panel makers to boost efficiency over the years, and what a bummer. Here we have all this free energy raining down and most solar panels can only capture 10-15% of it. The newest possible solution to poor solar efficiency sounds a little wacky, but materials scientists at Northwestern University seem confident.
All you have to do, they say, is imprint a series of bumps and pits on the panels like you’d find on a Blu-ray disc. I mean, it’s not like you’re using them to watch movies any more. They might as well be good for something.It’s not as simple as just poking some holes in a solar panel, though. The researchers actually used Blu-ray discs as a template to get quasi-random nanostructures onto the surfaces. Significant manufacturing time has been spent designing panels that have similar structures as a way of increasingly light absorption, but the pattern of a Blu-ray movie seems to do just as well. These bumps and divots are read by the laser in a Blu-ray drive.
The algorithms that determine the pattern of bumps and grooves on a Blu-ray disc were developed to maximize data compression and error tolerance, but that also makes each disc a great example of quasi-random nanostructures. Just like the more specialized nanostructures designed for solar panel tech, this pattern increases the efficiency of solar panels dramatically. Testing showed that the bumpy panels were about 22% more efficient than smooth ones.
This is a real result, and finally, it’s something that isn’t indefinitely five years in the future.
It’s not a done deal, though. The technology to do this already exists, so now scientists need to see if the Blu-ray trick scales up and works on a variety of solar panel types. Boosting solar efficiency to the mid 30s could finally make it more competitive with fossil fuels.