Scientists in China have invented a new type of coating that can turn standard windows into solar panels.
The discovery could supercharge the global clean energy transition, according to the team from Nanjing University who led the research.
The breakthrough centres around something called a diffractive-type solar concentrator (CUSC), which guides sunlight to the edge of the window in order to harvest it into electricity.
The latest CUSC technology overcomes limitations with previous designs, which suffered from low efficiency or visual distortion. The new transparent coating can be applied to existing windows without altering their appearance.
"The CUSC design is a step forward in integrating solar technology into the built environment without sacrificing aesthetics," said optical engineer Wei Hu.
"It represents a practical and scalable strategy for carbon reduction and energy self-sufficiency."
The breakthrough could be used to transform tower blocks, skyscrapers and other high-rise buildings into clean energy power stations.
The coating is made from layers of cholesteric liquid crystals that can be produced through roll-to-roll manufacturing in order to make it scalable.
"By engineering the structure of cholesteric liquid crystal films, we create a system that selectively diffracts circularly polarized light, guiding it into the glass waveguide at steep angles," explained optical engineer Dewei Zhang.
“This allows up to 38.1 per cent of incident green light energy to be collected at the edge.”
Recent solar window breakthroughs have focussed on replacing existing windows with transparent solar cells, however this makes retrofitting existing buildings difficult and costly.
A 1-inch-diameter prototype with the new coating was able to power a 10-mW fan when the Sun was shining.
Scaled up, the researchers said the technology could deliver a “global terawatt-scale green energy supply, and billion-ton annual carbon emission reduction, meeting with the sustainable development of human society”.
In order to make it more commercially viable, the researchers say the power conversion efficiency can be improved, while manufacturing techniques also need to be optimised.
The new coating was detailed in a study, titled ‘Colourless and unidirectional diffractive-type solar concentrators compatible with existing windows’, which was published in the journal PhotoniX.
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