ABSTRACT
Solar panel is a device used to convert sun’s radiation into electricity. It’s a clean energy source as it creates no emission. The present solar panels have certain limitation, among this the major one is requirement of frequent cleaning of PV panels. Mainly PV panels are used in desserts and snow regions, where we can see the accumulation of dust and snow on the cover glass of PV panels which drastically reduce the efficiency of solar panel. Self-cleaning hydrophobic coatings are developed based on the lotus principle, where the rolling droplet of water carries away the dust particles. Transparent Al-based coating and titanium dioxide coating are compared on this regard and their XRD, transmittance, absorbance and wettability (WCA) properties are analyzed in this project. Titanium dioxide coating was made on transparent glass via pressurized spray technique. A two layer coating was done with intermediate heating in oven. An amorphous structure is obtained with WCA 78 at 85% of transmittance. This clearly shows it as a hydrophobic coating.
