Coating helps solar panels soak up more of the sun

A new type of reflective coating can make solar panels far more efficient, soaking up nearly all available sunlight from nearly any angle, US researchers said.

Current solar panels - which convert energy from the sun into electricity - absorb only about two-thirds of available sunlight.

But surfaces treated with a coating developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, can harvest 96.2 per cent of sunlight.

"That is a tremendous savings," Rensselaer's Shawn-Yu Lin, whose study appears in the journal Optics Letters, said in a telephone interview.

Mr Lin said the technology addresses two main problems in current solar cells. It captures more colours of solar spectrum and it captures light from all angles.

"If you look at a solar panel, it looks a bit bluish," Mr Lin said. That is "telling you not all of the blue color is being absorbed. It should look totally dark."