ACS Photonics – Quality Factor of Luminescent Solar Concentrators and Practical Concentration Limits Attainable with Semiconductor Quantum Dots
Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) can be utilized as both large-area collectors of solar radiation supplementing traditional photovoltaic cells as well as semitransparent “solar windows” that provide a desired degree of shading and simultaneously serve as power-generation units. An important characteristic of an LSC is a concentration factor (C) that can be thought of as a coefficient of effective enlargement (or contraction) of the area of a solar cell when it is coupled to the LSC. Here analytical and numerical Monte Carlo modeling are used in addition to experimental studies of QD-based LSCs to analyze the factors that influence optical concentration in practical devices. See the full article here.