Carbon Fiber Mirror building block for space based solar power | NextBigFuture.com

Lightweight parabolic mirrors for solar concentrators have been fabricated using carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) and a nanometer scale optical surface smoothing technique. The smoothing technique improved the surface roughness of the CFRP surface from ~3 micron root mean square (RMS) for as-cast to ~5 nm RMS after smoothing. The surfaces were then coated with metal, which retained the sub-wavelength surface roughness, to produce a high-quality specular reflector. The mirrors were tested in an 11x geometrical concentrator configuration and achieved an optical efficiency of 78% under an AM0 solar simulator. With further development, lightweight CFRP mirrors will enable dramatic improvements The post Carbon Fiber Mirror building block for space based solar power appeared first on NextBigFuture.com.