Performance+ technology for yield enhancement
Performance+ technology for yield enhancement
Nature has developed perfect light management solutions over millions of years. Our role model: the rose petal. Its surface has a fascinating, hierarchical micro and nanostructure optimized to couple light into the petal with maximum efficiency. This property ensures that rose petals appear extremely matte and have no glare spots—a clear sign that almost no light is reflected.
Based on years of research at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), we have decoded this ingenious anti-reflection mechanism to revolutionize light management in solar cells.
The rose-petal-based texture is primarily designed to increase the yield of solar modules and should not be confused with our XRF Anti-Blend film.
A hierarchical micro and nanotexture
In detail, rose petals have countless small cone structures randomly arranged on their surface. The high aspect ratio (i.e., the ratio between the height and width of the cone structures) as well as the special nano-folds on the surfaces of the cones provide the unique anti-reflection effect, which is far superior to conventional anti-reflection coatings, especially at flat light incidence. Phytonics has patented the technology (DE102021206851A1).
What is the yield gain?
Maximum performance, even with low-angle sunlight. Phytonics' technology excels particularly at shallow incidence angles. The diagram shows the short-circuit current and the achieved improvement depending on the angle of incidence: While the yield of the reference module drops significantly with flatter light, the bionic surface ensures a consistently high current yield. At incidence angles above 60 degrees, we achieve a relative efficiency improvement of up to 50%. This results in a significantly more stable yield profile over the entire day and year, especially with low-angle sunlight.
Reflected luminance
Thanks to the hierarchical micro and nanostructures with a high aspect ratio, the Performance+ technology also impresses with excellent glare protection: Even with extreme irradiation of 100,000 lux on the module surface and a flat incidence angle of 70 degrees, the reflected luminance remains below 3,000 cd/m² – a top value that sets technological benchmarks.
The Performance+ technology at a glance
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Mastering
The production of the microstructured master at centimeter scale is carried out using 3D printing (2-Photon Polymerization).
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Scaling up
Subsequently, the structure master is transferred into a nickel shim. This is then scaled up to square meter size in several steps.
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Production of film masters
The microstructure is then transferred from the nickel shim to a film in an embossing process, with a width of over 1.30 m. This film is used to transfer the structure onto solar glass in a roll-to-plate process.
Industrial-scale production
From cutting-edge research directly to mass production. By artificially producing highly precise structure masters, we have succeeded in scaling the bionic texture to large-area formats in the range of square meters. Phytonics develops highly efficient industrial coating processes for applying the microstructure to solar glass. The coated glass can then be integrated directly into any PV production line without any adjustments. This is how we bring groundbreaking bionics to the market without any logistical extra effort.
First demo projects
Several residential roofs have already been successfully equipped with our bionic Performance+ coating. The technology drastically minimizes reflection losses and therefore appears darker in the photo than the standard solar module on the left in the image.