Glass substrates for energy applications

Background:

Nippon Sheet Glass (NSG) is one of the largest glass manufactures in the world. With a strong presence in Europe and manufacturing sites in the UK NSG produces a wide range of glass products. NSG produces glass for markets such as automotive, display and optical products and in considerable volume for the built environment.

NSG seeks to add value to their current building integrated glazing range by extending their current functionality from such things as low emissivity and self-cleaning to that of energy generation. The opportunities in the field of energy are significant and include solution deposited transparent photovoltaics (OPV), opaque photovoltaic spandrel panels (Perovskite) and substrates for photocatalytic hydrogen and solar fuel generation.

Project Aims:

The glass substrate can play a range of roles in these technologies both by providing a rigid transparent support as well as through deposition of multi-layers within the product architecture. The task of this project is to understand the glass substrate and explore technology innovations that can be employed using the solution processing techniques available at the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC) at Swansea University.

This will involve working within the scale-up group at SPECIFIC, led by Professor Trystan Watson and collaborating with the NSG research team at Lathom in the UK.

The SPECIFIC IKC sits beyond fundamental science to identify the technologies emerging from laboratories and assess their suitability to scale up in the area of building integrated functional coatings that generate, store or release energy. The scale-up group has responsibility for identifying new device architecture and chemistries that fit with the necessary criteria of large-scale manufacture which includes earth abundance, manufacturing feasibility and impact on the environment.