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设计，能够直接向商业建筑和家庭提供清洁、现场和充足的电力。虽然公用事业太阳能为城市中心提供异地发电，但仅因散热就损失了高达10%的电力。随着不断变化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源水平的最有希望的途径之一。我们计划通过与个别零部件制造商和通过i-Corps奖项发现的客户群建立密切的行业合作伙伴关系，扩大我们的实验室级电动窗技术。通过与窗户制造商的初步合作，我们的滩头市场将为南加州的大型商业项目提供服务，将能源格局转变为丰富、清洁能源的未来。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什么区别。LSC通过被称为发光体的纳米级颗粒吸收入射光。发光体(例如量子点)是一类粒子，当暴露在广泛的光中时，吸收光谱的高能部分，并以较低的能量再次发射光-这种重新发射的光被称为光致发光(PL)。我们创新中的目标量子点由InAs/InP/ZnSe组成，这是一种在可见光光谱(400-700 nm)范围内吸收光，并在近红外(NIR)波段(900-1000 nm)以荧光的形式重新发射的材料。因此，重新发射的光是可见的透明的，并且设计得很好，可以作为发电窗口。发光能源功率窗采用了一项由四个基本组件组成的创新：(1)微米级硅太阳能电池网格，(2)带有(3)嵌入式InAs/InP/ZnSe量子点发光体的聚合物波导，以及(4)选择性反射滤光片，以捕获量子点发光体产生的大部分光致发光，并实现竞争窗口U值。我们的设计已经使用实验验证的建模工具进行了优化，我们已经开始独立制造四个设备组件。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.