The ever-more-humble carbon nanotube may be just the device to make solar panels – and anything else that loses energy through heat – far more efficient.
Rice University scientists are designing arrays of aligned single-wall carbon nanotubes to channel mid-infrared radiation (aka heat) and greatly raise the efficiency of solar energy systems.
Gururaj Naik and Junichiro Kono of Rice's Brown School of Engineering introduced their technology in ACS Photonics.
Their invention is a hyperbolic thermal emitter that can absorb intense heat that would otherwise be spewed into the atmosphere, squeeze it into a narrow bandwidth and emit it as light that can be turned into electricity.
The discovery rests on another by Kono’s group in 2016 when it found a simple method to make highly aligned, wafer-scale films of closely packed nanotubes.
Read more at Rice University
Photo: Rice University graduate student Chloe Doiron co-led a project to create a device that recycles waste heat into electricity through aligned carbon nanotube films. (Credit: Courtesy of Chloe Doiron)