Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) incorporating a dye doped thin film coating can be used as a wave-guide to absorb and redirect light to coupled solar cells. Coatings including dyes dispersed in a liquid crystalline host can be used to redirect absorbed light preferentially to the edges of a concentrator for collection by solar cells. The goal of this project is to demonstrate that a liquid crystalline host (UCL-‐018) can improve the gain of a solar concentrator, and to design an LSC based on this technology. To do this, various liquid crystal alignments are tested, as well as different designs that incorporate liquid crystalline thin films.

Date Published: 11 October 2012
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 8485, Nonimaging Optics: Efficient Design for Illumination and Solar Concentration IX, 84850C (11 October 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.931725

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8485:
Nonimaging Optics: Efficient Design for Illumination and Solar Concentration IX
Roland Winston; Jeffrey M. Gordon, Editor(s)