Sam Richardson with Roger H. French, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
Laser light scattering for characterization of degradation of photovoltaic materials and mirrors
Angle resolved laser light scattering, to determine the power spectral density, and the spatial frequencies of surface roughness involved in light scattering in photovoltaic systems represents a new tool to characterize environmental degradation. Using bidirectional reflectance and transmission distribution functions (BRDF and BTDF), one can quantitatively observe changes in surface scattering in PV materials and components. The goal of this project will be to perform BRDF measurements on a variety of PV materials and components, with differing amounts of solar or environmental exposure, and then extract quantitiative insights from the changes in the power spectral density of the BRDF, into the length scales and characteristics of surface structure. These can then also be quantitatively used in computational optics modeling to reproduce the resulting optical effects arising from surface structural changes.