Lightweight Carbon Fiber Mirrors for Solar Concentrator Applications
Abstract
Lightweight parabolic mirrors for solar concentrators have been fabricated using carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) and a nanometer scale optical surface smoothing technique. The smoothing technique improved the surface roughness of the CFRP surface from ~3 μm root mean square (RMS) for as-cast to ~5 nm RMS after smoothing. The surfaces were then coated with metal, which retained the sub-wavelength surface roughness, to produce a high-quality specular reflector. The mirrors were tested in an 11x geometrical concentrator configuration and achieved an optical efficiency of 78% under an AM0 solar simulator. With further development, lightweight CFRP mirrors will enable dramatic improvements in the specific power, power per unit mass, achievable for concentrated photovoltaics in space.
Additional Information
© 2017 IEEE. We acknowledge funding from Northrop Grumman Corporation. This effort made use of facilities provided by the Kavli Nanoscience Institute, the Molecular Materials Research Center, the Resnick Institute, and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at Caltech. We acknowledge the helpful contributions of Mark Kruer, Mike Levesque, and Erik Kurman at Northrop Grumman.Attached Files
Submitted - 1810.09529.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 90780
- DOI
- 10.48550/arXiv.1810.09529
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20181109-075349019
- Northrop Grumman Corporation
- Created
-
2018-11-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-06-02Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Kavli Nanoscience Institute, Resnick Sustainability Institute, JCAP, Space Solar Power Project