Cementitious materials as promising radiative coolers for solar cells

Matteo Cagnoni; Alberto Tibaldi; Jorge S Dolado; Federica Cappelluti

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105320

Cementitious materials as promising radiative coolers for solar cells

iScience. 2022 Oct 13;25(11):105320. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105320. eCollection 2022 Nov 18.

Authors

Matteo Cagnoni¹, Alberto Tibaldi^{1

2}, Jorge S Dolado^{3

4}, Federica Cappelluti¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, Torino 10129, Italy.
² Istituto di Elettronica e di Ingegneria dell'Informazione e delle Telecomunicazioni, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche c/o Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, Torino 10129, Italy.
³ Centro de Física de Materiales, CSIC-UPV/EHU, Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal 5, San Sebastián 20018, Spain.
⁴ Donostia International Physics Center, Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal 4, San Sebastián 20018, Spain.

Abstract

Nowadays, radiative coolers are extensively investigated for the thermal management of solar cells with the aim of improving their performance and lifetime. Current solutions rely on meta-materials with scarce elements or complex fabrication processes, or organic polymers possibly affected by UV degradation. Here, the potential of innovative cement-based solutions as a more sustainable and cost-effective alternative is reported. By combining chemical kinetics, molecular mechanics and electromagnetic simulations, it is shown that the most common cements, i.e., Portland cements, can be equipped with excellent radiative cooling properties, which might enable a reduction of the operating temperature of solar cells by up to 20 K, with outstanding efficiency and lifetime gains. This study represents a first step toward the realization of a novel class of energy-efficient, economically viable and robust radiative coolers, based on cheap and available cementitious materials.

Keywords: Applied sciences; Engineering; Solar terrestrial physics.