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So heres an idea (I wish I could make money on it, but even credit for the idea would be nice :)

Seems to me that the problem with solar panel efficiency is that there is a huge distance the photoelectric electron has to travel to reach a conductor, thus losing energy as it has to battle through the semiconductor.  I never understood the simple line patterns they use on the conductors...as if they are maximizing semiconductor surface for the most photovoltaic electrons, but in doing so they lose on the energy efficiency.

What if instead of the simple metal lines, they sputtered a metal pattern based on some of the more filigreed areas of the Mandelbrot set?  By some proof, didnt someone prove that the set is connected?  Couldnt you choose your iteration value to some appropriate value to make enough filigree to provide a large surface area, but with metal conductors very close by to almost all areas of semiconductor?  Wouldnt you think that could raise efficiency?

Any ideas on how to pursue this beyond casual thinking?

Yes, what your saying makes a lot of sense, but I would think a more efficient pattern than the Mandelbrot set would be branching type fractal patterns like in leaves or blood vessels.

i've read about fractal antennae before, relevant?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_antenna
http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/gasket/

Something like this?

(http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2002/art/manyfrac.jpg)

Indeed. A fractal shaped solar collector is called a tree.  ;)

Seems like manufacturing would be the real challenge here.

Don't photovoltaic cells have conductors along the back, in addition to the semiconductor.


Duncan C

hehehe :)

Also see: http://www.inl.gov/featurestories/2007-12-17.shtml

Maybe u can utilize the surface area of aerogel to house a nano-engineered fractal structure...?
i recently saw a special on pbs about fractals and its so fascinating. Mandel...whatever seems to have given efficiency a concrete formula. O0

The main problem with solar panels is: how can you make them cheap ?

While fractal pattern do show an advantage at radiowavelengths and it is also affordable to make those, light works on much smaller wavelengths and to operate at that wavelength you end up at the Nanoscale. While currently research is undergoing to use these technologies for trying to make things invisible (cloaking) it can also ofcourse work the the way round when we try to capture the light. The company working on the cloaking technology is calling these materials used for cloaking "Fractal Metamaterials".

The only problem is nanoscale "fractal Metamaterials" are still way to expensive to be used in solar panels.
Some day (soon) perhaps but definatly not today.

You can read more about this on my blog here:
http://fractuality.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/fractal-antennas-fractal-metamaterials/

those crazy mats of  -1 < IoR < 1?
nice :D

though, mats of IoR < 0 also are cool... :)

woodlands:
increasing the surface would add folds. Folds would add self-shadowing parts. Self-shadowing parts would minimize efficiency. - My guess is, that the benefit and the miss in that case would be similar...
though, line like structures as suggested here (or even better, meta-mats :D) might work just fine :)

Fractal nanostructured titania thin films of low roughness, high complexity, and relatively broad particle distribution have been developed by condensation of titanium butoxide in an ethyl cellulose (EC) polymer matrix, the process being induced by alcoholysis in the absence of water.


http://www.techstore.ie/Renewable-Energy/Solar-Energy/Solar-Panels.html

Well the term nano is widely overused as a marketing ploy, i doubt those mentioned solar panels are the result of what can be considered a real nanoproduction process.