Most of the pictures you see of serious solar power installations involves large flat panels of solar cells, sometimes acres of them, or whole rooftops covered with panels. To ask a rhetorical question, would it not be better if less space were used and the installation not so conspicuous? That’s the goal of a new solar panel technology that uses optical fiber for photovoltaics.

When it comes to collecting solar energy, it appears there will be many ways to flay the feline. There are usually trade-offs such as lower cost for lower efficiency, but the goal of most solar cell research is to minimize the trade-offs or else develop a property in a new approach that makes it appealing for specific applications.

Using zinc oxide nanostructures grown on optical fibers and coated with dye-sensitized solar cell materials, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new type of three-dimensional photovoltaic system.
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“Using this technology, we can make photovoltaic generators that are foldable, concealed and mobile,” said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering. “Optical fiber could conduct sunlight into a building’s walls where the nanostructures would convert it to electricity. This is truly a three dimensional solar cell.”
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Fabrication of the new Georgia Tech PV system begins with optical fiber of the type used by the telecommunications industry to transport data. First, the researchers remove the cladding layer, then apply a conductive coating to the surface of the fiber before seeding the surface with zinc oxide. Next, they use established solution-based techniques to grow aligned zinc oxide nanowires around the fiber much like the bristles of a bottle brush. The nanowires are then coated with the dye-sensitized materials that convert light to electricity.
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“In each reflection within the fiber, the light has the opportunity to interact with the nanostructures that are coated with the dye molecules,” Wang explained. “You have multiple light reflections within the fiber, and multiple reflections within the nanostructures. These interactions increase the likelihood that the light will interact with the dye molecules, and that increases the efficiency.”
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“This is a different way to gather power from the sun,” Wang said. “To meet our energy needs, we need all the approaches we can get.”
[Source: Georgia Tech]

Like many solar cell technologies, this blend of nanotechnology and optical fibers is still in the laboratory-prototype stage. Work needs to be done to find optimal (read: better) dye-sensitizing compounds and to use least expensive optical fiber.