P2i Tests Plasma Nano-Coating for Solar Industry
Nanotechnology innovators P2i and Energy Launch have teamed up
to develop a nano-coating designed for application on solar panels.
BY CHARLES THURSTON
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Britain’s P2i, in partnership with Savannah, GA-based Energy Launch LLC, will be testing its new plasma-bond- ed nano-coating on solar panels and other solar elements
with solar industry manufacturers over the next two quarters
prior to industry launch.
The durable coating renders a surface like panel glass to
be not merely liquid-repellent, but rather “non-wettable,”
which means that dirt and other materials do not adhere,
according to Ross Harding, managing partner of the venture
fund. In normal solar panel arrays, dirt tends to reduce the
efficiency of a panel by three to five percent, which then
requires manual cleaning, he said. The routine cleaning of
solar panels has become a cottage industry in solar markets
like California.
In colder climates, frost can be a problem for solar systems,
but the new coatings product reduces frost formation, since
water beads up and rolls off the glass surface—especially
inclined panels.
Should one or more solar panels become more completely
occluded, by a flock of Canadian geese, for example, the energy loss to the chain can be much higher, in the double-digit
percentage range, and require immediate cleaning.
Another feature of the new coating is that it does not
deflect or absorb as much energy—only one third—as competing coatings like polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE, commonly known as Teflon. Thus energy capture by the energy-conversion materials is higher. Other commonly used solar
panel coatings, like silicon dioxide, which provides glare protection, afford little functionality for water-repellency.
While Harding was unable to estimate the market value of
coatings like the P2i product, he said that businesses, which
have led to an increase of only one percent in solar panel efficiency have been launched to become $1 billion enterprises.
The P2i coating is molecularly bound to the entire product
surface and solvent-free. The nanometer-thin polymer coating is applied in a vacuum chamber using a special pulsed
ionized gas, or plasma, according to the company.
“[The new coating] does not deflect or absorb
as much energy—only one third—as competing coatings like polytetrafluoroethylene, or
PTFE, commonly known as Teflon.”
P2i Ltd, based in Oxfordshire, UK, was established in 2004
to commercialize liquid-repellent treatments developed by
the UK’s Ministry of Defense, the company indicates. Now on
a commercial scale, P2i’s patented process has been successfully applied to a wide range of products in a wide range of
markets including performance textiles, electronic devices,
filtration media and bio-consumables.
P2i Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of P2i Ltd., is based at
the Herty Advanced Material Development Center, in
Savannah, GA. Apart from solar applications, the coating
process has been used in bio-consumables, consumer electronics, optics, performance textiles, optics and water filtration, under the “ion-mask” and “Aridion” brands. CW
