Photovoltaic Project
This page is designed to assist and guide new students who will carry on the Nanotechnologies for Photovoltaic Electricity Generation project's Computer Science related parts.
Nanotechnologies for Photovoltaic Electricity Generation - Senior Design Project is an NSF-funded project carried out by Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science departments at SUNY-Binghamton. The project is supervised by Professor Alok Rastogi and Professor Collin Selleck from Mechanical Engineering department and supported by Professor Richard Steflik from Computer Science department. Arpit Mehta, Michael King and Tony Lin from Mechanical Engineering; and Serdar Mercan from Computer Science departments worked on the project through out the 2008-2009 academic year at SUNY-Binghamton.
Project
Outline
Purpose
The project focuses on advancing in the following areas:
- Use nanotechnology methods to create unique ensemble of nano semiconductors thin film layers and nanostructures
- Demonstration of potential of nanotechnology in developing new materials, forming thin film photoactive solar cell device components
- Complement these investigations for energy conversion by fabricating prototype solar cells
Website
The URL for the website for the project is: http://steflikk6.cs.binghamton.edu/~nano/photovoltaics/index.html
Content
The website includes various information on the project. There is a flash movie clip on the Home page and on the Project page. The flash movie on the Animation page is the one used in the project presentation at the end of the semester. Project documents and a Google SketchUp animation can be accessed from the website.
The site-map is as follows:
-Home -Documents -Animation -Project -Contact Us
Development
The website was developed using Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. A CSS Style Sheet was used to align each content on the website to avoid alignment faults observed in different web browsers. A web page template was used to display the web content. The flash movie clips on the website was created using Flash Slideshow Maker software. It's a really useful tool to create flash movies without too much programming effort.
How to Update
All web content including .swf files for flash movies can be obtained from Prof. Dick Steflik's FTP server at ftp://steflikk6.cs.binghamton.edu. You can use a software such as FileZilla to access the FTP server. The authentication information for the server can be requested from Prof. Dick Steflik and you can download FileZilla at http://filezilla-project.org/ for free.
Animation
Content
Basically, the animation has three parts
First Slide
In the first slide, you can observe the light source, the cell -which consists of two conductive glass plates-, and the load, which represents the consumption of the electricity generated by the system. There is a reaction occurring inside the glass plates. You can see the detailed reaction by clicking the lighting rectangle.
Second Slide
The key part of the system is shown in the second slide, which is the Energy Conversion. In the upper part, the light goes through the top glass plate and then it is absorbed level by level depending on the wavelength. Blue light is absorbed at the top, then is the green light, and at the bottom comes the red light.
When the light hits the dye (the upper half of the inner cell) the electrons are excited and have high energies. When the electrons are excited, they move through the titanium dioxide and pass to the upper conductive glass plate. Then they move through the conductive wire and start the circulation.
To replace the electrons which are excited, we use an electrolyte solution which is made up of iodine ethylene glycol. The electrons in the electrolyte have lower energies and they move up to return the electrons that the dye needs.
Again, to replace the electrons in the electrolyte which move upwards into the dye, we use a carbon backing right above the lower conductive glass plate. When the high energy electrons move through the system, they lose their energy in the process and return to the lower conductive glass plate. To complete the circuit, carbon backing help them pass to the electrolyte solution.
When you click the lighting rectangle inside the cell, you can see the detailed electron movements through the titanium dioxide.
Third Slide
In this slide, you can see the high energy electrons move through the titanium dioxide. When the light hits the dye, the electrons are excited and have high energies. When the electrons are excited, they move through the titanium dioxide to pass to the top glass plate.
