I-Corps: Scalable, Highly Efficient Power-generating Windows: the Future of Urban Buildings

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力引入了一种颠覆性的太阳能发电窗户设计，能够直接为商业建筑和家庭产生清洁、现场和充足的电力。虽然公用事业太阳能为城市中心提供场外发电，但由于散热，高达10%的损失。随着不断发展的立法机构对建筑能源法规提出更严格的要求，发电窗成为实现净零能耗水平最有希望的途径之一。我们计划通过与单个组件制造商和I-Corps奖发现的客户群体建立密切的工业合作伙伴关系，扩大我们的实验室级动力窗技术。通过与窗户制造商的初步关系，我们的滩头市场将服务于南加州的大型商业项目，将能源格局转向未来丰富、清洁的能源。这个I-Corps项目使用改进的发光太阳能聚光器（LSC）技术来创建一个高效的发电窗口，与大面积的窗口没有区别。LSCs通过被称为发光团的纳米级粒子吸收入射光。发光团（如量子点）是一类粒子，当暴露在宽范围的光下时，吸收光谱的高能量部分并再次以较低能量重新发射光-这种重新发射的光被称为光致发光（PL）。我们创新的目标量子点由InAs/InP/ZnSe组成，这种材料吸收可见光光谱（400-700nm）的光，并在近红外（NIR）波段（900-1000nm）以PL的形式重新发射。因此，重新发射的光是明显透明的，并且为发电窗口设计得很好。发光能量电源窗采用了一种创新技术，它由四个基本组件组成：(1)微尺度硅太阳能电池网格，(2)聚合物波导，(3)嵌入式InAs/InP/ZnSe量子点发光团，(4)选择性反射滤光片，以捕获量子点发光团产生的大部分光致发光，并使窗口u值具有竞争力。我们的设计已经使用经过实验验证的建模工具进行了优化，并且我们已经开始独立制造四个器件组件。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project introduces a disruptive solar power-generating window design capable of generating clean, on-site, and abundant electricity directly to commercial buildings and homes. While utility solar energy offers off-site generation to urban centers, up to 10% is lost simply due to heat dissipation. And with evolving legislature imposing stricter requirements on building energy codes, power-generating windows offer to be one of the most promising avenues for attaining net-zero energy levels. We plan to scale-up our laboratory-level power-window technology through close industrial partnerships with individual component manufacturers and customer segments discovered through the I-Corps award. Through initial relationships with window manufacturers, our beachhead market will service large-scale commercial projects in Southern California, shifting the energy landscape toward a future of abundant, clean energy. This I-Corps project uses improved luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) technology to create a highly efficient power-generating window, indistinguishable from large-area windows. LSCs absorb incident light via nanoscale particles, called luminophores. Luminophores (e.g. quantum dots) are a class of particles that, when exposed to a broad range of light, absorb the high energy portion of the spectrum and re-emit the light again at lower energies - this re-emitted light is known as photoluminescence (PL). The target quantum dot in our innovation consists of InAs/InP/ZnSe - a material that absorbs light across the visible spectrum (400-700nm) and re-emits as PL at wavelengths in the near-infrared (NIR) regime (900-1000nm). As such, the re-emitted light is visibly transparent and well designed for a power-generating window. Luminescent Energy power windows employ an innovation that consists of four fundamental components: (1) a grid of micro-scale silicon solar cells, (2) a polymer waveguide with (3) embedded InAs/InP/ZnSe quantum dot luminophores, and (4) selectively reflecting filters to trap the majority of the photoluminescence generated by the quantum dot luminophores and enable competitive window U-values. Our design has been optimized using experimentally-verified modeling tools, and we have begun fabrication of each of the four device components independently.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.