Nanopatterned and self-cleaning glass substrates for solar cell packaging

Solar energy is indispensable and needs to be developed to meet the future energy demands of the world. One of the impediments to this technology is the low efficiency of the solar module, the glass shield being one of the reasons. At present, solar modules suffer from 4% transmission loss at the air/glass interface (at normal incidence) which increases with an increase in the accumulation of dust particles. Hence, in this paper techniques have been presented to reduce the transmission loss in solar modules as well as to keep them clean. Nanopatterning of the glass shield surface exhibited an increase of ~3% in optical transmission as well as an improvement in omnidirectional antireflective behaviour. A solar module was also fabricated which exhibited an improvement of ~6% in the efficiency with the nanopatterning of packaging glass cover. Perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane (PFTS) and Titanium dioxide (TiO2) coatings have been employed for self-cleaning applications. Setup and performance of a 10 kW photovoltaic system has also been discussed.