The increase in the temperature of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells affects negatively their power conversion efficiency and decreases their lifetime. The negative effects are particularly pronounced in concentrator solar cells. Therefore, it is crucial to limit the PV cell temperature by effectively removing the excess heat. Conventional thermal phase change materials (PCMs) and thermal interface materials (TIMs) do not possess the thermal conductivity values sufficient for thermal management of the next generation of PV cells. In this paper, we report the results of investigation of the increased efficiency of PV cells with the use of graphene-enhanced TIMs. Graphene reveals the highest values of the intrinsic thermal conductivity. It was also shown that the thermal conductivity of composites can be increased via utilization of graphene fillers. We prepared TIMs with up to 6% of graphene designed specifically for PV cell application. The solar cells were tested using the solar simulation module. It was found that the drop in the output voltage of the solar panel under two-sun concentrated illumination can be reduced from 19% to 6% when grapheneenhanced TIMs are used. The proposed method can recover up to 75% of the power loss in solar cells.

Date Published: 26 September 2016
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9932, Carbon Nanotubes, Graphene, and Emerging 2D Materials for Electronic and Photonic Devices IX, 99320H (26 September 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2238327

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9932:
Carbon Nanotubes, Graphene, and Emerging 2D Materials for Electronic and Photonic Devices IX
Manijeh Razeghi; Maziar Ghazinejad; Can Bayram; Jae Su Yu, Editor(s)