Research Projects

The limited resources of mineral and fossil fuels and the adverse effects of their consumption on environment lead to look for a sustainable and environment friendly source of energy. Nature has provided us a great source- the sun. The only thing is how to trap the sun energy in an efficient way for the welfare of environment and so for humankind too. This proposal aims to develop materials suitable for photo-thermal conversion of sun light to generate electricity. On the theoretical grounds, it has been predicted that the photo-thermal devices are capable of very high overall efficiencies with almost 100% conversion of sun light into heat at the optimum temperature, and for a Carnot cycle upto 46% of the sun light arriving at the earth’s surface may be converted into useful work. This is greater than possible with quantum devices such as photovoltaic converters which have efficiency only less than 15%. Thus the economic benefits of the photo-thermal conversion over other methods are self-explanatory.