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

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.