TriNano Technologies: India’s Nano-Coating Push to Make Solar Panels Cleaner, Cooler and More Productive

India’s rapid expansion of solar power is creating a parallel engineering challenge that receives far less attention than manufacturing photovoltaic cells or building large solar parks. Once panels enter service, dust, pollution, bird droppings and other contaminants gradually accumulate on their glass surfaces. This soiling blocks incoming sunlight, reduces electricity generation and forces operators to spend water, labour and money on repeated cleaning.

Mumbai-based TriNano Technologies Pvt. Ltd. is attempting to solve this problem at the surface of the solar module itself. The SINE IIT Bombay-incubated deep-tech company has developed an indigenous solid-state nano-coating designed to combine self-cleaning, anti-reflection and light-trapping properties in a layer only a fraction of the thickness of a human hair.

Rather than redesigning the solar cell, TriNano is trying to extract more useful electricity and longer operating life from existing photovoltaic technology.

An Indian Deep-Tech Startup Built Around Solar Efficiency

TriNano Technologies was incorporated in Maharashtra in 2022, although the company says the research behind its coating technology began several years earlier. It has been incubated by the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, or SINE, at IIT Bombay, one of India’s prominent deep-tech startup incubators.

The startup was founded by a team that includes Dr Harsh V. Sethi, Dr Anshu Dandia and Dr Tanujjal Bora. Its technology has also received government recognition. Startup India named TriNano Technologies the winner of the Best Deeptech Startup Award under the National Startup Awards 5.0, highlighting its patented solar-panel nano-coating.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has separately featured TriNano’s technology as an Indian innovation for improving solar-panel output and reducing maintenance requirements.

A Coating Only Around 400 Nanometres Thick

At the centre of TriNano’s technology is a solid-state coating composed of inorganic, ceramic and oxide materials.

The layer is approximately 400 nanometres, or 0.4 microns, thick. It is deposited on the glass surface above the photovoltaic cells rather than requiring changes to the cells themselves. IIT Bombay has described the coating as thermally and chemically stable, while TriNano says the material can remain functional for years under outdoor operating conditions.

The approach gives the surface several functions simultaneously.

First, its microstructure is intended to trap more incoming light and direct it towards the photovoltaic material below. Second, the coating reduces reflection, allowing more useful solar radiation to enter the module instead of bouncing away from the glass. Third, the surface is engineered so that dust and other contaminants adhere less strongly.

TriNano describes these characteristics as a combination of light trapping, anti-reflection and self-cleaning behaviour. Its newer technology descriptions also include a cooling effect intended to reduce heat-related performance losses.

Tackling One of Solar Power’s Persistent Problems

Dust is a major operational problem for photovoltaic installations, particularly in dry and dusty regions.

Even a highly efficient solar module cannot perform at its rated potential if sunlight cannot reach the active photovoltaic surface. Large solar parks therefore require regular cleaning, which can involve substantial quantities of water as well as cleaning equipment, workers and maintenance expenditure.

TriNano’s coating is designed to make contaminants such as dust, grime, oil and bird droppings less likely to remain firmly attached to the surface. According to the company, material that does accumulate can be removed more easily through rain, air or light mechanical cleaning.

This could be particularly valuable in India because many of the country’s best solar resources are located in relatively dry regions where water itself is a valuable resource.

Reducing cleaning frequency would therefore have benefits beyond lower operating expenditure. It could also reduce water consumption across large photovoltaic installations.

More Electricity from Existing Solar Modules

TriNano’s technology is not intended to replace conventional photovoltaic manufacturing. Instead, it attempts to increase the amount of electricity generated by modules that already use established solar-cell technologies.

The precise performance improvement depends on the testing method and operating conditions.

Startup India’s National Startup Awards profile states that TriNano’s coating can increase energy output by approximately 4%, while reducing cleaning requirements by about 55% and potentially extending panel life by two to three years.

A Ministry of New and Renewable Energy technology document reports that testing conducted at the National Centre for Photovoltaic Research and Education at IIT Bombay and the National Institute of Solar Energy demonstrated a 7–8% gain in power output from coated commercial solar panels under the cited test conditions.

TriNano’s own current marketing material cites still higher performance improvements in some applications. These figures should therefore be understood as results or claims obtained under different operating and measurement conditions rather than as a guaranteed increase for every installation.

For large solar assets, however, even a relatively modest improvement can become significant when multiplied across thousands or millions of panels over several years.

Keeping Solar Panels Cooler

Solar panels need sunlight, but excessive heat works against their electrical efficiency.

As photovoltaic cells become hotter, their power-conversion performance generally declines. Long-term exposure to elevated operating temperatures can also contribute to material degradation.

TriNano says its coating interacts with portions of the infrared spectrum in a manner that helps reduce panel temperature. Combined with its anti-reflective and light-management characteristics, the company aims to increase useful light reaching the solar cells while limiting unnecessary heating.

The result is an interesting engineering approach: instead of solving only the dust problem, the surface treatment attempts to address several sources of solar-module performance loss simultaneously.

IIT Bombay Partnership Moves the Technology Toward Field Validation

A crucial step for any new solar material is proving that laboratory performance survives years of exposure to sunlight, rain, wind, dust and large temperature variations.

In December 2024, IIT Bombay and TriNano Technologies signed an R&D collaboration agreement focused specifically on anti-soiling coatings.

The programme brings together TriNano with IIT Bombay’s Photovoltaics Technology and Innovation Centre and National Centre for Photovoltaic Research and Education. The collaboration is intended to test coating performance in outdoor systems and assess its effectiveness at the scale of photovoltaic power plants.

Durability testing is especially important because a coating that provides an initial performance improvement has limited commercial value if its properties deteriorate rapidly under real operating conditions.

Long-duration validation will therefore be central to demonstrating whether the technology can become economically attractive for large solar developers.

Designed for Existing and New Solar Installations

Another potential advantage of the technology is that it operates at the module’s outer glass surface rather than requiring an entirely new photovoltaic architecture.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy describes the coating as suitable for monocrystalline, polycrystalline and thin-film photovoltaic panels, covering both ground-mounted solar projects and rooftop installations.

That creates several possible markets.

Large utility-scale solar parks could use the coating to reduce cleaning and improve lifetime energy yield. Commercial and industrial rooftop projects could benefit where maintenance access is difficult. Residential installations could potentially require less frequent cleaning, while installations in dusty environments could gain disproportionately if anti-soiling performance remains effective over long periods.

The technology could therefore complement India’s expanding domestic solar-module manufacturing ecosystem rather than competing with it.

The Economics Could Matter More Than the Efficiency Number

Solar technology is often compared using module efficiency, but electricity generation over an asset’s entire operating life can be equally important.

A panel that generates slightly more electricity each year, requires fewer cleaning cycles and experiences slower degradation can potentially deliver substantially greater lifetime value.

For solar developers, this is measured through factors such as energy yield, performance ratio, maintenance expenditure and the overall levelised cost of electricity.

TriNano is therefore addressing a part of the solar economy that becomes increasingly important as India’s installed photovoltaic fleet grows. The larger the country’s solar capacity becomes, the larger the accumulated cost of cleaning, water consumption, soiling losses and module degradation.

Even incremental improvements applied across gigawatts of generating capacity can translate into meaningful additional electricity production.

From Solar Manufacturing to Solar Materials Engineering

India’s solar strategy increasingly involves more than simply installing imported photovoltaic equipment. The country is building domestic capabilities across modules, cells, wafers, power electronics, energy storage and specialised materials.

TriNano represents another layer of this emerging ecosystem: advanced materials engineered in India to improve the performance of solar infrastructure itself.

Its technology also shows how India’s research institutions and startup ecosystem can intersect. Incubation through SINE, technical collaboration with IIT Bombay and evaluation through national photovoltaic research institutions give the company a pathway from laboratory materials science toward industrial deployment.

Commercial success will ultimately depend on coating cost, application speed, long-term durability and whether real-world energy gains justify installation expenses. Solar developers will also require extensive field data before applying a new surface treatment across very large photovoltaic fleets.

Those are significant hurdles, but they are exactly the challenges that separate an interesting laboratory material from a scalable industrial technology.

A Small Layer With Potentially Large Consequences

TriNano Technologies illustrates an increasingly important side of the Make in India deep-tech story. Indigenous innovation does not always require building an entirely new machine, battery or solar cell. Sometimes the opportunity lies in improving technologies that India is already deploying at enormous scale.

A coating just 0.4 microns thick may appear insignificant compared with a multi-gigawatt solar park. Yet if such coatings can reliably increase electricity generation, reduce water-intensive cleaning and slow degradation, their cumulative effect across India’s future photovoltaic fleet could become considerable.

As India moves toward a power system with hundreds of gigawatts of solar capacity, innovations that extract more electricity from every installed module will become increasingly valuable.

TriNano is attempting to build precisely that capability in India — using nanotechnology to make the country’s solar panels cleaner, more productive and potentially longer-lasting.

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Sources

Ministry of New and Renewable Energy — Tri-NANO Technology / Nanocoating for Solar Panels.

Startup India — National Startup Awards 5.0, Best Deeptech Startup Award: TriNano Technologies.

IIT Bombay / NCPRE — R&D collaboration with TriNano Technologies on anti-soiling solar coatings.

TriNano Technologies — Technology and company information.

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