Lightweight Carbon Fiber Mirrors for Solar Concentrator Applications

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 μm 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 in the specific power, power per unit mass, achievable for concentrated photovoltaics in space.