SBIR Phase I: Rare-Earth-Doped Wavelength Conversion Material and Optical Element

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目旨在将上下转换材料集成到单个光子器件中，以解决太阳光谱与由硅等单一吸收体形成的太阳能电池之间的失配问题。 稀土掺杂剂之间的协同非辐射能量转移将被用作支持波长转换的物理机制。 通过集成上转换材料和下转换材料，该方法将不仅增强吸收体带隙之上和之下的量子效率，而且恢复与上转换器中的下转换相关联的损耗。 在该项目中，为固态激光器开发的氟基材料将专门针对太阳能应用进行掺杂，并将进行测试，以确定在1到1000个太阳之间进行高效协同上下转换的可行性。该项目的更广泛/商业影响将是显着提高太阳能电池的能量转换效率的潜力。 在这项工作中解决的光谱失配是造成50%的能量到达太阳能电池的损失。 此外，该技术不需要改变太阳能电池或电气连接。 因此，将这种光学产品集成到太阳能系统中是简单的。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to integrate up and down conversion materials into a single photonic device to solve the problem of mismatch between the solar spectrum and solar cells formed from single absorbers such as silicon. Cooperative nonradiative energy transfer between rare-earth dopants will be employed as the physical mechanism to support wavelength conversion. By integrating up and down converting materials, this approach will not only enhance quantum efficiency above and below the absorber band gap, but also recover losses associated with down conversion in the up converter. In this project, fluorine-based materials developed for solid state lasers will be doped specifically for solar applications, and will be tested to determine the feasibility of efficient synergistic up and down conversion between 1 and 1000 suns. The broader/commercial impact of this project will be the potential to significantly improve energy conversion efficiency of solar cells. The spectrum mismatch addressed in this work is responsible for the loss of 50% of the energy reaching solar cells. In addition, this technology does not require changes to the solar cells or electrical connections. Therefore, the integration of this optical product into solar energy systems is straightforward.