Future solar panels will have light absorbing nanowires

11 July 2009

Researchers throughout the world are looking to enhance the conversion rate in a solar panels and recently scientists at Stanford have tried to improve the conversion of energy from the sun with the use of semiconductor nanowire. Researchers across the globe are investigating the use of various nanowires that can show some improvement in the efficiency.

The nanowires made by the semiconductor material like germanium can have many advantages including its compatibility with the computer chips and researchers found that it can enhance the light absorption significantly at some of the wavelength of light. Researchers at Stanford further observed that the efficiency improves further if the semiconductor nanowire is made from the combination of silicon and germanium.

The research team suggest that the size of the nanowire will play key role and different size nanowires will absorb different frequencies and further observed that a 10 nanometer nanowire absorbs shorter wavelength in the region of red to orange of the spectrum and as the size goes up, the nanowire absorbs higher wavelength towards the IR region of spectrum.

Further the research team found that certain angle boosts the absorption and if light falls on these nanowires  and while designing solar panels with these nanowires, the size as well as the angle must be taken into account. A combination of size of nanowires along with the direction might improve the conversion of solar energy to electrical energy.

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One Response to “Future solar panels will have light absorbing nanowires”

  1. On September 11th, 2009 at 6:10 am, solar panel Morgane Says:

    very interesting post, thanks! Solar panels provide clean and renewable energy. I use one, and I’m really happy with it.

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