Resumen de Invisibility cloak boosts solar panel efficiency
A cloak made of a polymer has been used to hide the metallic strips in solar panels, making the devices more efficient at using the sun's energy. Invisibility cloaks are made of materials that bend the path of light around them and so hide things under them from view. Martin Schumann at Karisruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and his colleagues have created a prototype solar panel with a cloak over the metallic contact fingers that extract the generated current. Although crucial, these metal strips reduce the light a panel absorbs, lowering efficiency by about 10 per cent. Schumann and his colleagues designed a single solar cell with an added polymer coating. They then etched grooves into the coating, so it guides incoming light around the contact fingers and towards the solar cell (Advanced Optical Materials, doi.org/b9fd).
