Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Scalable, anisotropic transparent paper directly from wood for light management in solar cells

2017; Elsevier BV; Volume: 36; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.nanoen.2017.04.059

2211-3282

Chao Jia, Tian Li, Chaoji Chen, Jiaqi Dai, Iain Kierzewski, Jianwei Song, Yiju Li, Chunpeng Yang, Chengwei Wang, Liangbing Hu,

Nanomaterials and Printing Technologies

The growing demand for flexible electronics and solar energy conversion devices has fueled a search for high-quality paper-based materials with excellent mechanical flexibility and optical properties such as high transparency and haze. Despite the tremendous efforts have been dedicated to developing paper-based materials with high transparency or high haze, challenges still remain in achieving both due to the general exclusivity between them. Here, for the first time, we develop a novel anisotropic paper material possessing high mechanical flexibility and fantastic optical properties with both high transmittance (~90%) and high haze (~90%) simultaneously via a simple yet effective “top-down” approach by directly shear pressing the delignified wood material. The anisotropic transparent paper demonstrates a high efficiency as a light management coating layer for GaAs solar cell with a significant efficiency enhancement of 14% due to its excellent light management capability with both high transparency and high haze. The presented “top-down” approach is facile, scalable, cost-effective and “green”, representing a promising direction for developing flexible electronics, solar energy conversion devices and beyond.