Graphene-Enhanced Thermal Interface Materials for Thermal Management of Photovoltaic Solar Cells

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that incorporating graphene-enhanced thermal interface materials significantly improves heat dissipation in photovoltaic cells, leading to increased efficiency and reduced power loss under concentrated sunlight conditions.

Contribution

It introduces graphene-enhanced TIMs with up to 6% graphene content, showing improved thermal conductivity and effectiveness in PV thermal management compared to conventional materials.

Findings

Reduced voltage drop from 19% to 6% under concentrated illumination.

Recovered up to 75% of power loss in solar cells.

Enhanced thermal conductivity of TIMs with graphene fillers.

Abstract

The increase in the temperature of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells affects negatively their power conversion efficiency and decreases their lifetime. The negative effects are particularly pronounced in concentrator solar cells. Therefore, it is crucial to limit the PV cell temperature by effectively removing the excess heat. Conventional thermal phase change materials (PCMs) and thermal interface materials (TIMs) do not possess the thermal conductivity values sufficient for thermal management of the next generation of PV cells. In this paper, we report the results of investigation of the increased efficiency of PV cells with the use of graphene-enhanced TIMs. Graphene reveals the highest values of the intrinsic thermal conductivity. It was also shown that the thermal conductivity of composites can be increased via utilization of graphene fillers. We prepared TIMs with up to 6% of graphene designed specifically for PV cell application. The solar cells were tested using the solar simulation module. It was found that the drop in the output voltage of the solar panel under two-sun concentrated illumination can be reduced from 19% to 6% when graphene-enhanced TIMs are used. The proposed method can recover up to 75% of the power loss in solar cells.