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Conductive Transmissive Coating for Enhanced-Absorption Thin Film Solar Cells

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Army
Contract: W911QY -16-P-0068
Agency Tracking Number: A15A-016-0065
Amount: $149,943.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: STTR
Solicitation Topic Code: A15A-T016
Solicitation Number: 2015.0
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2015
Award Year: 2016
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2016-01-29
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2016-08-15
Small Business Information
15 Presidential Way
Woburn, MA 01801
United States
DUNS: 004841644
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Qingwu (King) Wang
 (781) 935-1200
 kwang@agiltron.com
Business Contact
 Geoffrey Burnham
Phone: (781) 935-1200
Email: gburnham@agiltron.com
Research Institution
 MIT Lincoln Laboratory
 Erik Woisin
 
244 Wood Street
Lexington, MA 02420
United States

 (781) 981-7806
 Federally Funded R&D Center (FFRDC)
Abstract

Thin-film, lightweight, large-area flexible inorganic solar cells have shown promise to meet the militarys remote power needs on the battlefield. However, thin film solar cells normally have inferior conversion efficiencies due to limited absorption of sunlight by the thin active layer. Various approaches have been investigated to improve conversion efficiencies of thin film solar cells. Among these approaches, metallic nanostructure induced light scattering or trapping in the thin films have been demonstrated as an effective approach. Another approach to enhance solar cell efficiencies is a broadband, wide angle anti-reflective coating. Therefore, it will be ideal if a coating can perform multi-functions: top electrode, AR coating, and scattering long wavelengths into the solar cell. Leveraging its previous development of high performance flexible solar cells for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Agiltron proposes to develop nanostructured multi-functional top coatings for flexible thin film inorganic solar cells. The proposed top electrode can be readily applied on flexible thin film solar cells to achieve short-circuit current improvement by a factor of 25%. Phase I of this program is to demonstrate the technical feasibility through modeling, analysis, and experimentation.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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