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玻璃涂层实现的，这种涂层增加了太阳能光伏玻璃的透射率，并创造了防雾和自清洁的表面。目前的减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。降低太阳能发电的每瓦特成本是重大的能源挑战之一，具有巨大的社会和政府影响。拟议的项目是解决这一挑战的一个组成部分。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目调查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。在科学文献和商业产品中都出现了基于纳米颗粒的增透玻璃涂层。然而，适用于太阳能应用的唯一具有耐久性的涂层存在性能低下的问题。在这个项目中，探索了通过化学和热处理来提高低成本、高性能纳米粒子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使用一系列行业标准测试来衡量。将对这些涂层的失效机理进行研究，以进一步指导工艺优化。然后，太阳能电池板将使用镀膜玻璃组装，并与未镀膜玻璃的相同电池板进行基准比较。这项工作的预期结果是太阳能电池板通过了所有标准的可靠性测试，并证明了与非涂层电池板相比，太阳能电池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.