The team plans to prove that the technology can be scaled up from palm-sized demonstration models to windows large enough to put in and power a building.
Los Alamos Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics (CASP) lead Victor Klimov said: “We are developing solar concentrators that will harvest sunlight from building windows and turn it into electricity, using quantum-dot based luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs).”
A LSC, which is a light-management device, consists of a slab of transparent glass or plastic impregnated or coated with highly emissive fluorophores.
They can serve as large-area sunlight collectors for photovoltaic cells.
LSC fluorophores re-emit photons at a lower energy after capturing solar light shining onto a larger-area face of the slab.
Total internal reflection drives these photons to the device edges where they are collected by photovoltaic cells.
In the Nature Energy paper, the team reported deploying the “doctor-blade” technique to create large LSC windows for depositing thin layers of a dot/polymer composite on top of commercial large-area glass slabs.
Klimov said: “The quantum dots used in LSC devices have been specially designed for the optimal performance as LSC fluorophores and to exhibit good compatibility with the polymer material that holds them on the surface of the window.”
LSCs possess properties such as widely tunable absorption and emission spectra, nearly 100% emission efficiencies, and high photostability.
Klimov said that if the cost of an LSC is much lower than that of a photovoltaic cell of comparable surface area and the LSC efficiency is sufficiently high, then it is possible to significantly reduce the cost of generating solar electricity.
Image: Los Alamos Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics researchers hold a large prototype solar window. Photo courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
