Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2024 Conference (MATSUS24)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsus.2024.369
Publication date: 18th December 2023
Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) are a promising technology to help integrate photovoltaic (PV) cells as functional architecture in the urban environment.[1] LSCs typically consist of a waveguide slab, which is doped or coated with a luminescent species, or luminophore.[2] Incident light is absorbed by the luminophores and re-emitted at longer wavelengths through photoluminescence. A large portion of the emitted light is concentrated by the waveguide via total internal reflection to the edges of the LSC, where a strip of PV cells may be retrofitted attached to collect the spectrally converted light. While LSCs have traditionally been cuboidal in geometry, in recent years, new architectures have been explored for example, circular, curved, polygonal, wedged, and leaf-shaped designs.[3,4] These new
designs can help reduce optical losses, enable integration within existing infrastructure, or unlock new applications.
However, fabrication of complex LSC geometries can be both time- and resource-intensive. LSCs are commonly made using conventional manufacturing methods such as casting, which either limits possible architectures to the availability of suitable moulds or leads to material waste as designs are cut to shape. Moreover, it is not possible to introduce secondary internal structure within LSCs by casting. To tackle these limitations, in this talk the use of 3D printing (specifically fused deposition modelling) as a tool to fabricate complex prototype LSC architectures for rapid optical evaluation will be described. It will be shown that the print pattern (e.g. line thickness, build-up of layers) introduces internal structure within the LSCs, affecting the optical pathways for light absorption and emission. Moreover, we will demonstrate how we have implemented upgrades to the Monte Carlo ray-trace software pvtrace, to enable advance prediction of the optical efficiency of 3D-printed LSCs.[5] The more versatile computational workflow afforded by our upgrades, coupled with 3D-printed prototypes, will enable rapid screening of more intricate LSC architectures, while reducing experimental waste.
This work was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 818762 - SPECTRACON). S.V. and AR was supported by Marshall Scholarships.
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