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

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是通过提高电池板的效率和降低清洁和维护成本来降低太阳能发电的成本。这种改进是使用多功能纳米级玻璃涂层实现的，该涂层增加了太阳能光伏玻璃的透射率，并形成了防雾和自清洁的表面。 目前，抗反射涂层玻璃的市场渗透率仅为25%，这表明需要一种性能最佳、价格低廉、产量高的涂层。该涂层的实施增加了功率输出并降低了每瓦成本。这些节省也随着光伏器件效率的提高而增加，因此下一代太阳能电池将从所提出的创新中获得更大的利益。降低太阳能发电的每瓦成本是巨大的能源挑战之一，并具有巨大的社会和政府影响。该项目是应对这一挑战的一个组成部分。该小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目研究了利用热和化学工艺来提高抗反射太阳能玻璃涂层的耐久性。 基于纳米颗粒的抗反射玻璃涂层已经在科学文献和商业产品中提出。然而，仅有的具有适用于太阳能应用的耐久性的涂层遭受低性能。在该项目中，探索了通过化学和热处理来提高低成本、高性能纳米颗粒涂层的耐久性的方法。化学和热处理对耐久性和可靠性的影响将通过一系列行业标准测试进行测量。这些涂层的失效机制将被研究，以进一步指导工艺优化。然后将使用涂层玻璃组装太阳能电池板，并将其与具有未涂层玻璃的相同电池板进行基准测试。这项工作的预期成果是一个太阳能电池板，通过所有标准的可靠性测试，并证明了一个显着增加功率输出比非涂层面板。

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.