illuminating science

Right here at UQ, researchers from Physics have developed XeroCoat, a cheap, easily produced anti-reflective coating. Their main aim is to apply it to solar cells - by reducing the amount of light reflected from the surface of the cell, more will reach the processing part. This means higher efficiency, and they’re predicting increases of up to 8% (which is a lot for solar cells!) Using an anti-reflective coating isn’t new, but is normally too expensive to use for general purpose cells. XeroCoat, however, is cheap to produce and easy to apply (no high pressures or temperatures needed!) so can be used for cheaper cells.

XeroCoat also has applications beyond solar cells - it also stops surface from fogging up. Think about glasses, goggles, windscreens, (camera LCDs?), even bathroom mirrors - the list goes on! Of course, it’s not full developed yet, but with applications anywhere where you don’t want reflections or fog messing up your image, it looks like a winner.