Photo voltaic cells are an more and more necessary supply of renewable vitality, however there’s nonetheless room for enchancment. Stanford engineers have now developed a pyramid-shaped lens that may focus daylight from any angle onto a photo voltaic cell, retaining it gathering energy from dawn to sundown.
Photo voltaic cells work finest in direct daylight, which suggests a lot of them would possibly solely have just a few good hours of vitality era in them per day. Others maximize their working time by actively shifting to comply with the Solar throughout the sky, however that consumes vitality and provides mechanical complexity.
For the brand new research, the Stanford crew got down to develop a passive know-how that may accumulate daylight that strikes it from any angle, and concentrates it in direction of the photo voltaic cell beneath. The top result's an array of inverted-pyramid-shaped buildings that the crew calls Axially Graded Index Lenses (AGILE), which might kind a layer that replaces the protecting high floor of a photo voltaic cell.
In exams, the AGILE prototypes had been in a position to seize greater than 90 % of the sunshine that hit its floor, focusing it in order that it’s thrice brighter by the point it reaches the photo voltaic cell. The crew says that this method might enhance the effectivity of photo voltaic cells by permitting them to gather oblique daylight, in addition to boosting their output in lower than ideally suited climate and circumstances.
AGILE sounds easy sufficient, however the engineering behind it's fairly sophisticated. Every little pyramid is made up of a stack of various glasses and polymers with totally different refractive indices – primarily, every layer bends the incoming mild to a distinct diploma. The highest layer has a low refractive index to permit the sunshine to enter from any angle, however every step down bends it just a little extra, till it focuses on the photo voltaic cell beneath. The edges are mirrored to bounce any wayward mild again the place it must go.
These a number of supplies additionally permit the machine to seize a large spectrum of sunshine, from near-ultraviolet to infrared. The crew additionally had to verify the supplies labored effectively collectively – as an illustration, that they increase in warmth at comparable charges in order to not crack the machine. Even utilizing a number of supplies, the crew demonstrated that AGILE may be 3D printed.
The crew says that the brand new system might assist increase the locations the place photo voltaic vitality can be utilized, decreasing each the associated fee and the land wanted. AGILE might even enhance photo voltaic cells for spacecraft.
The analysis was revealed within the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering.
Supply: Stanford College
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