A Multi-optical Collector of Sunlight Employing Luminescent Materials and Photonic Nanostructures

A multifunctional, semitransparent photovoltaic device is proposed for harvesting sunlight over a tunable spectral range extending from the UV to the IR. Self-assembled monolayers of nanospheres applied to luminescent concentrators provide a photon management architecture, which relies on luminescence and diffraction of light. The light diffraction is tuned by changing the sphere diameter to match the transparency region of the fluorophores. The importance of each optical mechanism is inferred from a systematic experimental investigation of the external quantum efficiency of fabricated devices, and from the calculation of the resulting photocurrent under the AM 1.5 solar spectrum. Compared to the conventional luminescent concentrator, relative photocurrent improvements are shown between 50% and 500% depending on the spectral properties of the device components. It has been demonstrated how to tailor the photovoltaic performances, the color and the degree of transparency of the device to provide a versatile photovoltaic unit for sustainable building-integrated applications.