Copper and Transparent-Conductor Reflectarray Elements on Thin-Film Solar Cell Panels

This work addresses the integration of reflectarray antennas (RA) on thin film Solar Cell (SC) panels, as a mean to save real estate, weight, or cost in platforms such as satellites or transportable autonomous antenna systems. Our goal is to design a good RA unit cell in terms of phase response and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Dreyer, Philippe, Morales-Masis, Monica, Nicolay, Sylvain, Ballif, Christophe, Perruisseau-Carrier, Julien
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 19.11.2013
Subjects
Antenna arrays
Antennas
Conductors
Copper
Multilayers
Panels
Photovoltaic cells
Real estate
Solar cells
Superhigh frequencies
Thin films
Unit cell
Visible spectrum
Weight
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Summary:This work addresses the integration of reflectarray antennas (RA) on thin film Solar Cell (SC) panels, as a mean to save real estate, weight, or cost in platforms such as satellites or transportable autonomous antenna systems. Our goal is to design a good RA unit cell in terms of phase response and bandwidth, while simultaneously achieving high optical transparency and low microwave loss, to preserve good SC and RA energy efficiencies, respectively. Since there is a trade-off between the optical transparency and microwave surface conductivity of a conductor, here both standard copper and transparent conductors are considered. The results obtained at the unit cell level demonstrates the feasibility of integrating RA on a thin-film SC, preserving for the first time good performance in terms of both SC and RA efficiency. For instance, measurement at X-band demonstrate families of cells providing a phase range larger than 270{\deg} with average microwave loss of -2.45dB (resp. -0.25dB) and average optical transparency in the visible spectrum of 90% (resp. 85%) using transparent conductive multilayer (resp. a copper layer).
ISSN:2331-8422