Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) are devices to enhance solar power collection served in solar photovoltaic (PV) system. They can significantly reduce the total material consumption of solar panel and simplify the design of multi-PV devices. Because of the doping luminescent materials, LSCs could convert light from a broad wavelength range to a specific narrower range. Meanwhile, with certain geometry design and high-refractive-index matrix materials, total internal reflection (TIR) effect could guide the emitted photons into the certain small region. However, for originally designed LSCs, there are several inevitable limitations compress the efficiency performance of LSCs. The escape cone loss is one of the geometry perspective limitations which restricts the fabrication of large-scale LSC devices. According to the Snell’s law, the maximum angle of TIR is limited by the optical property of materials near the interface and that angle could not be 90°. Therefore, there should be a number of photons escaping from LSCs with a high incident angle. And researchers define the high-angle photon escape region as escape cone. Herein, we are going to introduce an optimized approach to limit the escape cone loss and furthermore enhance the performance of the functionalized LSC device. Compared with other relevant research, this approach provides a long-wavelength-range window for incident photons and reflection selectivity properties for emitted photons. Furthermore, compared with normal LSC, it shows better energy performance and larger quantum efficiency enhancement.

Surface enhancement of luminescent solar concentrator

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.