Team:TU Delft/Design

iGEM TU Delft

Applied design

Applying our Biolenses

Improving the way we capture light

Detection of light is vital in many applications, including microscopy, photography, or solar cells. Especially in development of solar cells, there is a lot of research done how to improve these systems. Since fossil fuels are running out and global warming is becoming a bigger issue, ‘green’ forms of energy are becoming more and more popular. Most people agree that to curb global warming and to prevent shortage, a variety of measures needs to be taken. Probably the best response to the growing energy problem is to switch to renewable energy sources. Renewable energy is collected from resources which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat. Since in less than an hour, the theoretical potential of the sun represents more energy striking the earth’s surface than worldwide energy consumption in one year, this is considered to be the most promising renewable energy source (Crabtree, 2006). Solar panels would therefore be a perfect solutions to solve the energy problem. However, the efficiency of solar panels is still very low nowadays and has to be increased to make them profitable. One promising finding is the use of microlens arrays (MLAs). It is already proven that the use of a MLA as an encapsulation layer for the solar panels results in 20% to 50% increase of the efficiency (Jutteau, Paire, Proise, Lombez, & Guillemoles, 2015; Nam, Kim, Lee, Yang, & Lee, 2013). However, the production of these MLAs is still relatively expensive and especially very environmental unfriendly, since the production uses caustic chemicals, high temperatures and low pressure (Nam et al., 2013). Therefore, economically it is not favorable to use MLAs at the moment and perhaps even more important for us, it absolutely does not fit the idea about environmentally friendly solar panels. After all, the production is very environmentally unfriendly.

Microlens array
Figure 1, an example of a solar cell covered by microlenses

References

  1. Berezin, M. Y., & Achilefu, S. (2010). Fluorescence lifetime measurements and biological imaging. Chemical reviews, 110(5), 2641-2684.
  2. Einstein, A. (1917). Zur quantentheorie der strahlung. Physikalische Zeitschrift, 18.
  3. Gather, Malte C., and Seok Hyun Yun. "Single-cell biological lasers." Nature Photonics 5.7 (2011): 406-410.
  4. Jonáš, Alexandr, et al. "In vitro and in vivo biolasing of fluorescent proteins suspended in liquid microdroplet cavities." Lab on a Chip 14.16 (2014): 3093-3100.
  5. Shaner, N. C., Patterson, G. H., & Davidson, M. W. (2007). Advances in fluorescent protein technology. Journal of cell science, 120(24), 4247-4260.
  6. Svelto, Orazio. Principles of lasers. Ed. David C. Hanna. London, New York, Rheine: Heyden, 1976.
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