Solar Energy Can be Pulled Off from Glass Windows by Quantum-Dot Coating

Most of the times, engineers have attempted employing modules of linked solar cells to gather sunlight that falls on windows. Some thought, if it would be feasible to function with less cells. With the advantage of a procedure for gathering the light falling on a window and then shifting it to a singular solar cell, “simplifies the gadget, it makes it less costly,” says Victor Klimov, an engineer of nanotechnology at Los Alamos.

Initially, the engineers attempted to use organic dyes as a method to concentrate the light. The trouble with that, according to Klimov, is that the dyes captured the light they release because it seems very close to the incoming lasers from the sun. In 2013, researchers instead begin investigating nano-meter scale semiconductors known as quantum dots as they enable customizing properties like as what sorts of light they capture and which they do not.

In the novel study, Klimov and his group identified that a sleek layer of quantum dots on normal glass could offer a lifetime of up to 14 years and close to 1.9 percent overall energy conversion efficacy. To prepare such devices practically they would have to obtain a level of 6 percent, he says, so they are getting nearer.

Moreover, adding quantum dots to the glasses of windows is surprisingly simple. A machine pours slurry of quantum dots and PVP polymer onto the window glass and blade shifts it out from a sleek sheet.

The quantum dots comprise of a CdSe inner core, a CdZnS exterior shell and are layered in silica for safeguarding from oxidation – with the external shell functioning like an absorber. When a photo hits a single dot, an electron within the shell is shifted out of its valence band straightaway in the conduction band, leaving behind a hole. The electron and hole shifted to the core, when they relink to generate a novel photon with lesser energy.

By design, the shell can just absorb high energy photons and the novel photon inside the core is free to propagate through the glass and the layers of quantum dot through interior reflections. Ultimately, the propagating photons would occur at the edges of the glass, where one or more of the solar cells could grab them up.

Conclusion

As stated by Klimov, “The stability must be compared to the solar cell’s stability.” According to him, the application technique is accessible and expensive enough for the usage of glass industry. Even a coating could be scraped off and re-used. But still, there is lots of work to perform before reaching to the breakeven point based on energy conversion. To accomplish the efficiency goal, he is now fixing the quantum dots concentrations utilized and their absorption properties.