用于汽车应用的柔性轻量化III-V族聚光光伏器件

Abstract Use of solar energy for electric power has a huge potential to reduce the carbon footprint caused by greenhouse gases (GHG). While photovoltaics (PV) has been adopted in mainstream terrestrial applications, their implementation in the automotive sector, to make PV-powered vehicles, has been minimal. The existing PV-powered vehicles utilize low-efficiency solar cells, which limits the driving range to 20 miles/day. In this work, we present concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) devices using high-efficiency III-V solar cells for automobile application to realize longer driving range. We have developed inexpensive and flexible III-V PV on metal tapes and integrated them with a durable, flexible PDMS microlens for light concentration. The integrated device showed more than 9 times improvement in current density and power output compared to a solar device without a light concentrator at 1 sun. Use an array of microlens integrated with III-V PV could extend the driving range to 115 miles/day for a vehicle with an electric mileage of 10 miles/kWh. We have also investigated the effect of the light incident angle on device performance to evaluate the optimal tilt angle while mounting the PV module on the vehicle’s roof.