“Improving the Efficiency of the Solar Cell”
February 23, 2008 – 1:28 am“Improving the Efficiency of the Solar Cell” was the title of my 7th grade science fair project. It was kinda lame… I basically got a fresnel lens, a parabolic mirror, and I tested each of them at concentrating light onto the cell to see if the solar cell would pump out more juice when extra light hit it. It did. To a point. Anyway, turns out I was onto something back in 1987. In the last few days I’ve seen two articles about taking on the same issues with the solar cell that I stumbled upon way back when. The first is solar bubbles - creating parabolic mirror / lenses with mylar / clear balloons…
And the second - MOTH EYES! - some kind of reverse-engineering of the nanostructure of a moth eye, which as you’ll recall from staring into them do not reflect much light at all:
Moth eyes may hold key to more efficient solar cells from PhysOrg.com
One of the difficulties with solar power is that solar cells are notoriously inefficient. Some of that inefficiency, says Peng Jiang, is due to the fact that silicon is reflective. Jiang, an assistant professor at the University of Florida, tells PhysOrg.com that there are “disadvantages to the anti-reflective coating currently used in solar cells.”[...]
