Magnolia Solar Corporation announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary, Magnolia Solar, achieved high-quality 6-inch growth of nanostructured antireflection (AR) coatings on glass for solar cell applications.
The company says this milestone brings this AR technology closer to commercial viability in the existing solar power market.
Dr. Ashok K. Sood, president and CEO of Magnolia Solar Corporation, says the company is working with the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany through our research and development center located at the Albany NanoTech Complex to further improve the process and demonstrate this AR coating technology on high-efficiency solar cells.
Most silicon solar cells and many high-efficiency thin film solar cells produced today measure approximately 4 inches. Magnolia says the ability to produce 6-inch and larger AR coatings is expected to be a major step toward market acceptance of this technology.
The company’s nanostructured AR coating seeks to maximize solar energy absorption over the complete solar spectrum covering UV, Visible and Infrared part of the solar energy. This approach minimizes the reflection losses to less than approximately 1% during peak sunlight hours.
At large angles of incidence during morning and late afternoon hours, the reflection losses have been reduced from over 25% to less than 5%.
Magnolia says that utilization of its AR technology results in a significant improvement in the performance of solar panels at all relevant wavelengths. It says incorporating this technology can provide improvement over what is commercially available today by making the solar panels productive for several hours more each day.
Magnolia says it continues to make progress in further improving its AR coating technology for materials including Silicon, GaAs, and GaN and other materials of interest for solar cell applications. This nanostructured antireflection coating uses oblique angle nanostructure growth thereby enhancing the energy absorption and minimizing the reflection loss.
The company has filed multiple patents to protect its intellectual property and continues to add to the patents.