The Effect of Size and Dopant Concentration on the Performance of Nanorod Luminescent Solar Concentrators

Abstract

Luminescent solar concentrators are planar concentrators based on trapping light and wave-guiding it to attached PV cells. They are well suited for building integration, viable in locations with significant indirect sunlight and can be complementary to geometric high-concentration systems. Nanorods have been proposed as novel luminescent centres with promising properties, such as reduced self-absorption. Several nanorod doped concentrators have been fabricated and characterised in order to investigate the dependence of LSC performance on size and dopant concentration. The experimental results illustrate the effect of re-absorption and the associated losses with increasing size and concentration. Computational results using a raytrace model are in good agreement with the experiments. Furthermore, the raytrace model was employed to make realistic projections and extend the parameter range of the experiment.