Blu-ray disc structure usable to improve solar cell efficiency

The quasi-random nanostructures on Blu-ray discs can be used to improve the efficiency of solar cells. If the patterns are applied to the surface of solar cells, more light is collected.

Researchers from the American Northwestern University coated a layer of polymer solar cells with the Blu-ray pattern from Jackie Chan’s film ‘Supercop’. The improvement in light absorption the pattern brought to the surface was 21.8 percent, the university said. “We found that any pattern or texture works better than none, but the Blu-ray disc pattern was the best,” said Jiaxing Huang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the university’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

It has been known for some time that patterning the surface of solar cells improves efficiency by effectively dispersing incident light. The high degree of compression and fault tolerance applied when writing data to Blu-ray discs creates a quasi-random arrangement of pits and ‘islands’ with feature sizes between 150 and 525 nanometers. According to the maker, those patterns are practically optimized for capturing photons. The researchers claim that it does not matter which content creates the pattern.

The discovery could potentially provide a cheaper method of applying efficiency patterns to solar cells. The structures could be printed not only on polymer solar cells, but also on solar cells made of other materials. The researchers describe their work in the authoritative scientific journal Nature.