Photo credit: Jeremy Levine Design/Flickr

A solar heater I once built out of soda cans and glass worked mainly for one reason: the matte black paint I sprayed all over the cans and the wooden back of the unit. And everyone knows that dark colors absorb more sunlight than lighter ones, which is why summer clothes are generally made of lighter fabrics. So it should come as no surprise that if you were to make solar panels as dark as possible that they would absorb the majority of the sun’s rays, right? Natcore Technology Inc. has done just that, creating the darkest solar cell made from black silicon, resulting in a cell with a “near-total absence of reflected light” that absorbs 99.7% of the light energy shone on it.

This is big news. A solar panel that is nearly 100% efficient at turning sunlight into energy would be capable of producing significantly more energy than most panels in use today. Conventional solar panels are made from dark-blueish silicon and are coated with antireflective coating in order to assist them with the absorption of light protons. According to tests done by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) these panels have a reflectance of 4%. Tested in the same facility, the use of black silicon drops that number below 2%. But with Natcore’s new technology of etching “nanoscale pores” into the wafers followed by the filling and coating them with silicon dioxide, the reflectance level of the panels dropped to just 0.3%. This “absolute black” is “simply astounding,” said Chief Technology Officer Dr. Dennis Flood.

According to the company, the panels also perform better than standard panels in the morning and afternoon because they are better equipped to absorb waning sunshine at different times of the day. NREL must think highly of the new technology, as they have granted Natcore an exclusive license to develop black silicon products base on their existing patents. While not yet in production, Natcore is working on a manufacturing tool capable of making 2,000 wafers per hour and is already talking with potential customers.

[via SmartPlanet]