Comments on: Infrared Photovoltaic Solar Cells

By: Fred Holme

Fred Holme — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:44:09 +0000

I have a Glass reienforced Panel——— GRPcomposite

I wish to convert it into a Solar Energy Panel with a hugh elec yeild

How do I do it

Greatfull Fred

By: Baccus

Baccus — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:14:46 +0000

I’m not an expert on photovoltaic modules, but I did have this explained to me by a research colleague who designs solar cells, and he claimed that it is very much the panel that determines whether a cell can produce a current from incident infrared radiation (as well as standard glass being opaque to infrared light of course).

When designing a PV panel material you need to tune the band-gap of the electrons to match the type of light you expect the panel to be exposed to. The higher the band-gap the higher the voltage (and hence power) that will be produced by the material, but the light that impacts the panel must have enough energy to overcome this band-gap in order to promote valence electrons to the conducting band to produce any voltage at all. Visible light has more energy than infrared light, and hence is able to work at a higher band-gap, so if you tune your panel to work optimally in visible light then infrared light will not be able beat the band-gap energy and so will not produce any electrical energy. If you tune it to be able to harvest energy from infrared light then the power produced at all points in the spectrum will be decreased.

As I understand it this is a simple mathematical question, where you can calculate the optimal band-gap energy based on the amount of energy available over the entire spectra of light at the earth’s surface, and indeed this has been done many times in the past, and has resulted in the current mono- and poly-crystalline panels that are so common today, which will work extremely well in visible light, and not at all in infrared light. So don’t delay buying panels because you expect infrared PV to take off anytime soon Infrared nanoantennas now, that’s a different story:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6030/702.short

By: Ikes

Ikes — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:14:58 +0000

And how about the availability ? Already in 2005 they were singing haleluja about the infrared nano antennas but i can’t seem to find a place where you can buy it ???
It sounds SOOO good that I rather don’t invest in the current solar panels , but i can sit around and wait 10 more years like that.

Carlo.

By: Steve Bell

Steve Bell — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:19:46 +0000

I have read the article on the infrared solar panels.

My question is: Would some form of plastic serve the same purpose as the special and expensive glass required for the the infra red spectrum?

As far as I am aware plastics do not filter out the IR spectrum in the same way that glass does.

Is this correct and what would the problems of using plastics be?

Many thanks

Steve Bell