Leaf-Like Solar Concentrators Could Majorly Boost Solar Efficiency

Solar concentrators that mimic leaves present a promising approach for enhancing the scalability and efficiency of solar energy systems.

Since its development in the 1970s, the luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) has been designed to improve solar energy capture by utilizing luminescent materials to convert and focus sunlight onto photovoltaic (PV) cells. Unlike traditional concentrators that depend on mirrors and lenses, LSCs can harness diffuse light and are often employed in building-integrated photovoltaics, where their semitransparent and colorful properties provide aesthetic advantages.

However, scaling up LSCs to cover large areas has been challenging due to issues like self-absorption of photoluminescent (PL) photons within the waveguide. Researchers at Ritsumeikan University (Japan) have proposed an innovative “leaf LSC” model that promises to overcome such limitations by enhancing the collection and transfer of light to photovoltaic cells.

The leaf LSC design addresses the scalability problem by using smaller, interconnected luminescent components that function like leaves on a tree. As reported in the Journal of Photonics for Energy (JPE), this innovative setup involves placing luminescent plates around a central luminescent fiber, with the plates’ sides facing the fiber. This arrangement allows incident photons to be converted into PL photons by the plates, which then travel through the fiber and are collected at its tip by a PV cell. To enhance efficiency, clear lightguides connect multiple fibers to a single PV cell, effectively increasing the incident area of the LSC while reducing DOI: 10.1117/1.JPE.14.035501