Nature Communications (Nov 2017)

Dynamic tuning of optical absorbers for accelerated solar-thermal energy storage

  • Zhongyong Wang,
  • Zhen Tong,
  • Qinxian Ye,
  • Hang Hu,
  • Xiao Nie,
  • Chen Yan,
  • Wen Shang,
  • Chengyi Song,
  • Jianbo Wu,
  • Jun Wang,
  • Hua Bao,
  • Peng Tao,
  • Tao Deng

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01618-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Solar-thermal energy storage based on phase-change materials suffers from slow thermal-diffusion-based charging. Here the authors alleviate this issue by introducing optical absorbers and controlling their distribution to accelerate charging process and thus improve solar-thermal energy conversion.