Blu-ray disc with Jackie Chan increased the efficiency of solar panels by 22%

Older Blu-ray discs found good use. November 25, Nature Communications magazine published an article describing the method of how to use these discs to increase the efficiency of solar cells.

“The film“ Police Story 3: Super Police ”with Jackie Chan came to us by accident,” said American engineer Jiaxing Huang from Northwestern University, one of the authors of the scientific work. - My student found it among several other films with BestBuy. Of course, suitable discs with other movies. "
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The fact is that individual solar cells convert light into electricity slightly better than others, absorbing photons in a wider range of the spectrum. This is due to pseudo-random patterns in the surface texture of “ultra-efficient” cells, as compared to completely random patterns in other cells (while cells with random patterns work better than photo cells with a periodic clear texture). And the surface of Blu-ray discs consists of just such necessary pseudo-random grooves and protrusions in which the video and audio signals are encoded. This is due to the Blu-ray Disc Encoding Algorithm, which adds redundant encoding to a randomly coded signal, and also limits the number of consecutive 0 or 1. Thus, the random sequence becomes pseudo-random. By a happy coincidence, the dimensions of the grooves and protrusions on the Blu-ray surface from 150 to 525 nm are almost ideal for photocells.



Jiaxing Huang and his students found a way to transfer a pattern from a Blu-ray disc to the surface of an element, turning a regular cell into a “super efficient” one.

The technique involves the manufacture of rubber stamps that copy the surface of Blu-ray discs, then they are treated with the surface of solar cells.



Experiments with disks continued for several months. The authors believe that the result was quite unexpected (that is, too good): as many as 21.8%. Probably, the technique can be improved using thicker solar cells or other types of materials. It is also necessary to optimize the process of imprinting rubber. In these cases, the efficiency of solar cells can be increased by an even greater amount!

It is even possible that Blu-ray disc factories sometime retrain for solar energy.