SBIR Phase I: High-Performance Self-Cleaning, Anti-Reflective Coating for Photovoltaic Glass

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是通过提高电池板的效率和减少清洁和维护成本来降低太阳能发电的成本。这种改进是通过使用多功能纳米级玻璃涂层来实现的，该涂层增加了太阳能光伏玻璃的透光率，并创造了一个防雾和自清洁的表面。目前抗反射镀膜玻璃的市场渗透率仅为25%，这表明需要一种高性能、廉价、高通量的镀膜。这种涂层的实施增加了功率输出，降低了每瓦成本。随着光伏设备效率的提高，这些节省也会增加，因此下一代太阳能电池将从拟议的创新中获得更大的好处。降低每瓦太阳能发电的成本是重大的能源挑战之一，并具有巨大的社会和政府影响。拟议的项目是应对这一挑战的一个组成部分。这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目研究了热和化学工艺的利用，以提高抗反射太阳能玻璃涂层的耐久性。基于纳米粒子的抗反射玻璃涂层已经出现在科学文献和商业产品中。然而，唯一适合太阳能应用的耐久性涂料的性能较低。在这个项目中，研究了通过化学和热加工来提高低成本、高性能纳米颗粒涂层耐久性的方法。化学和热加工对耐用性和可靠性的影响将使用工业标准测试电池进行测量。研究这些涂层的失效机理，以进一步指导工艺优化。然后将使用镀膜玻璃组装太阳能电池板，并与未镀膜玻璃的相同面板进行基准测试。这项工作的预期结果是，太阳能电池板通过了所有标准可靠性测试，并显示出比未涂覆面板的功率输出显著增加。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to reduce the cost of solar generated electricity by increasing the efficiency of panels and reducing cleaning and maintenance costs. This improvement is created using a multi-functional, nanoscale glass coating that increases the transmittance of solar photovoltaic glass and creates a surface that is antifogging and self-cleaning. Current anti-reflective coated glass has seen market penetration of only 25%, indicating a need for a top-performing, cheap, high-throughput coating. The implementation of this coating increase power output and reduce cost per watt. These savings increase with photovoltaic device efficiencies as well, so as the next generation of solar cells will see even greater benefit from the proposed innovation. Reducing the cost per watt of solar generated electricity is one of the grand energy challenges and has immense societal and governmental impacts. The proposed project is one component of addressing that challenge.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 project investigates the utilization of thermal and chemical processes to increase the durability of a anti-reflective solar glass coating. Nanoparticle-based antireflective glass coatings have been presented in both the scientific literature and commercial products. However, the only coatings with durability suitable for solar applications suffer from low performance. In this project, methods to increase the durability of a low-cost, high-performance nanoparticle coating through chemical and thermal processing are explored. The effect of chemical and thermal processing on the durability and reliability will be measured using a battery of industry standard tests. The failure mechanisms for these coatings will be investigated to further guide process optimization. A solar panel will then be assembled using the coated glass and benchmarked against an identical panel with uncoated glass. The expected outcome of this work is a solar panel that passes all standard reliability tests and demonstrates a significant increase in power output over a non-coated panel.