Boffins turn Moon dirt into glass for solar panels, eye future lunar base power
- Reference: 1744108688
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/04/08/melted_moon_dust/
- Source link:
Led by Dr Felix Lang of the University of Potsdam, the research team [1]focused on two unavoidable truths about future lunar life: Settlers will need a lot of solar power, and shipping bulky, Earth-made panels to the Moon is a logistical and financial nightmare.
According to their paper published last week, the team's approach could cut the amount of solar panel material that needs to be hauled off Earth by up to 99 percent. All this while still offering radiation shielding and mechanical durability comparable to conventional panels, they claim.
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Not bad for Moon dust.
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By heating a lunar regolith simulant to 1,550°C for three hours in a vacuum-sealed resistance furnace, the team produced a semi-transparent moonglass-a-like, which they then combined with halide perovskite material to create a functioning solar power cell.
"The highlight of our study is that we can extract the glass we need for our solar cells directly from the lunar regolith without any processing," Lang [5]told his university. "The process is also scalable so that the solar cells can be produced with little equipment and very little energy input."
The highlight of our study is that we can extract the glass we need for our solar cells directly from the lunar regolith without any processing
According to the paper, regolith from the Moon's highland regions - rich in anorthosite and low in iron oxide (FeO) - is ideal for this process, as it produces a clearer glass compared to the darker, iron-heavy lowland regolith (they used simulant material in the experiment, not actual Moon dirt, we repeat).
While the smelting was done in Earth-based lab conditions, the researchers said the process could be replicated on the Moon with a solar furnace: Essentially a rig of mirrors or Fresnel lenses that concentrates lunar sunlight to reach the required melting temperatures.
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The perovskite layer used to make the solar cells has to be ultra thin - just 500 to 800 nanometres thick. According to the researchers, scaling the process could theoretically allow a single kilogram of perovskite precursor material to produce up to 400 square-metres of solar cells.
It's not all sunshine and space dirt
The solar cells Lang's team ended up building were just two millimetres thick, with the moonglass-a-like making up most of the bulk, along with the perovskite and a 100-nanometre layer of copper as the back electrode.
While the feat is impressive to us, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) less so, reaching just 8.5 percent under space-like conditions. That's low by commercial solar standards, and even lower than their glass-based control devices.
Much of the reason for the lower PCE comes from the limited transparency of the moonglass - regolith from low-FeO regions still contains enough iron to darken the glass and reduce light transmission. The team addressed this "parasitic absorption" by significantly reducing the glass thickness, which improved efficiency in lab simulations.
A single 0.1mm moonglass layer enabled a simulated PCE of 21.5 percent under laboratory conditions, the team noted. Transparent ultra-thin metal was also able to increase PCE, the team noted, but they admit simple, thicker designs are likely to be the most advantageous for early lunar deployment.
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Lang told The Register that silicon extracted from regolith could also be used to fabricate solar cells that "would outperform our approach, potentially without any material that needs to be shipped from Earth."
Of course, production equipment would need to be shipped, and Lang said the equipment needed to extract high-purity silicon from moon dust would likely make the process impractical.
[8]Engineers pave the way for building lunar roads with Moon dust
[9]NASA rewrites Moon mission goals in quiet DEI retreat
[10]Molten lunar regolith heats up space colonization dreams
[11]NASA finds Orion heatshield cracks won't cook Artemis II crew
Then there's the problem of radiation degradation. Typical solar cells used on space missions have a life expectancy problem due to ionizing radiation, which causes the glass to darken, leading to lower PCEs. The simulated moonglass used in this experiment, however, showed impressive resistance to that effect - likely due to the same iron content that gives it its darker tint.
Combine that seemingly radiation-resistant moonglass with the known radiation tolerance of perovskite solar cells, and you have a recipe for long(er) lasting lunar power, albeit maybe with a slight drop in efficiency.
While it might resist radiation, there are still other concerns around perovskite that Lang told us could affect the lifespan of perovskite solar cells on the Moon - such as constant illumination speeding degradation and extreme temperature swings.
"There are still some questions regarding the stability of perovskites," Lang told us, while noting that the moonglass covering does a good job of eliminating some of the UV damage that perovskites can be susceptible to.
"Considering radiation, we believe our perovskite and moonglass could survive more than ten years," Lang told us. "Considering near constant illumination, likely we would need some more research to match these ten years."
Overall, our results pave the way for future moonsolar cells based on halide perovskites
"Overall, our results pave the way for future moonsolar cells based on halide perovskites, an approach that, considering the facile perovskite and moonglass fabrication, outshines other proposed methods to produce solar cells on the Moon," the scientists said in their paper.
Whether their method is ready for our next Moon missions - [12]whenever [13]those may ultimately be - is still up in the air, though Lang told us he's working toward getting funding for a demonstration mission, meaning the tech could find its way aboard a future Moon-bound rocket.
For now, Lang and his colleagues are focusing on improving those PCE numbers.
"Simply a lower glass thickness is straight forward, and considering that glass can be prepared very thin, this is an interesting option," Lang told The Register . "Another strategy we are working on is a magnetic separation that would allow us to remove iron impurities to obtain more transparent moonglass without much effort." ®
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[1] https://www.cell.com/device/fulltext/S2666-9986(25)00060-2
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[5] https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/headlines-and-featured-stories/detail/2025-04-03-solarzellen-auf-mondglas-photovoltaik-koennte-die-energie-fuer-eine-zukuenftige-basis-au
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[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/lunar_roads_material/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/24/nasa_dei_artemis/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/11/lunar_regolith_repairs_manufacturing/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/06/nasa_orion_heatshield_investigation/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/30/artemis_iii_gao_moon/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/29/nasa_narrows_artemis_iii_landing/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Little lugging required
A solar furnace would not require a lot of "lugging". A light-weight parabolic frame, assembled on the Lunar surface, fitted with thin, light-weight mirrors would work quite well and needn't be bulky or heavy. It could be made much lighter and packed much smaller than, say, a Lunar Rover.
Re: Little lugging required
A manufacturing line for glass and/or solar panels is a lot more than just a heat source though - you'd need a container for the molten regolith, various gubbins for purifying/separating it into transparent glass and Silicon, something to pour it out onto (you can't float it on water like how we make sheet glass down here on Earth), more gubbins to chop Silicon into wafers and P/N dope it, etc etc. A solar panel manufacturing plant is a big, heavy, complex thing, and usually requires a LOT of water, which usually ends up highly contaminated and dumped in some river..
Re: Little lugging required
...you can't float it on water like how we make sheet glass down here on Earth...
I'd like to see that but from a safe distance, say 2 miles. Float glass is made by floating glass on molten tin and there is no reason why that couldn't be done on the moon if it was in a pressurized structure. The lower gravity may slow down the process but wouldn't stop it from working.
One would expect water to be 100% recycled, dirty water is easy to distil, it's not economically viable on Earth but on The Moon with abundant solar energy it's very economically viable compared with other water sources.
Imagine the scene.
They've gone up to the moon, they've finally built these solar panels, only for a giant asteroid to smash it all to bits.
No wind to spread dust.
One thing that bothers solar panels heavily on this planet is the wind picking dust up and covering them*. Even if they are less efficient being made from moon stuff, let's say that real estate and dust will be no issue.
*No really, I read about some LARGE solar projects that were ruined because the panels needed dusting. Several square kilometers of panels that could not be watered or dusted in any automated fashion. Not to mention the panels were not at human reach heights; ladders or access to said panels for manual dusting labor was also unfeasible.
Re: No wind to spread dust.
And nobody tried to fly a helicopter over them to move the dust?
As you suggest dust is not a problem on The Moon, the retroreflectors placed there by the Apollo astronauts are still usable.
Re: No wind to spread dust.
A helicopter may kick up as much dust as it removes and therefore be counter-productive. Sorry.
Re: No wind to spread dust.
Not if you spray all the surrounding area with water first. Also the angle of the panels would deflect the dust to the ground, the wet ground, where it would stay.
But you're right, just using a chopper without the prep first would indeed be counter-productive.
"radiation shielding and mechanical durability comparable to conventional panels"
In a lunar environment they'd need to do better than conventional panels.