Investigation Of Transmittance And Hydrophobic Properties Of SiO:ZNO:SiO2 As A Multilayer Coating Substance

Solar panel often facing problem that reduce the energy produced especially when dust
and soil covers the surface of the solar panel, thus blocking the light. Not only that,
reflection that occured reducing the transmittance of light. Thus, to overcome these
problems, multilayer coating of SiO2:ZnO:SiO2 has been fabricated using sol-gel
method, via dipping process and utilised glass sheet as a core. In this study, the
SiO2:ZnO:SiO2 coating was compared to the SiO2:ZnO coating in terms of their
transmittance, absorption and hydrophobicity properties. The water contact angle was
used to evaluate the hydrophobic properties, while the Ultraviolet-Visible Spectrometer
was used to measure the transmittance and absorption. The triple layer coating initiated
90.2% on its average transmittance while the double layer coating had only 61.48%.
The absorption peak revealed that SiO2:ZnO coating had 0.86 A while SiO2:ZnO:SiO2
coating was only 0.33 A. On the other hand, the water contact angle for both coatings
were good. However, the SiO2:ZnO:SiO2 coating showed a higher water contact angle,
126° compared to the SiO2:ZnO coating, 82°. The higher contact angle the lesser the
surface energy thus it allows the water droplet to maintain its shape longer. The result
indicated that the multilayer coating of SiO2:ZnO:SiO2 was successfully fabricated with
better properties than conventional coating.