Highly Dispersed Nanocomposite Paste for Self-cleaning Photovoltaic Panels

Traditional technologies to fabricate self-cleaning coatings on curtain walls usually involve high initial equipment investment and complex manufacturing process, which lead to high production cost, e.g. 10-20 USD per square meter. We have developed a novel highly dispersed nanocomposite paste which is suitable for the low-cost easy screen-printing process to produce highly transparent multifunctional coatings on glass. The developed coating has an extremely high dispersion of the internal semiconductor nanoparticles (average particle size=5nm) so that it can inhibit the Rayleigh scattering effect and, hence, has a high transparency (over 98% in visible region). Meanwhile, the surface of the sunlight-activated coating has the properties of photocatalysis and super-hydrophilicity (contact angle <1°), which can decompose the organic compounds on surface, and also brush away the inorganic dust easily by rainwater. Moreover, the coating after tempering process is robust (hardness=8H; life time>20 years) and it can prevent the glass from the corrosion due to sandstorm and acid rain. The paste itself is water-based with lower volatile organic compound (VOC<3g/L) and zero heavy metals, which is safe for both the environment and humans. The manufacturing process of the paste is cheap, simple, and easy for transportation and storage. The estimated cost of the developed self-cleaning coating will be no more than 1 USD per square meter.