Enhanced solar energy harvesting in dye sensitized solar cells using nanophosphors and nano-structured optics (CONVERTED)

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Over the last 20 years, photovoltaic solar cells (PV) for power generation have spawned an industry that focuses on continuously improving materials to use the solar energy that is available more efficiently. With efficiencies approaching 12%, huge effort has been focused onto improving efficiency by using multi-layer materials, profiled surfaces, thin film technologies etc due to the huge positive impact they have on the carbon economy. On a recently completed TSB programme, CONVERT (TSB ref. AE100D), two of the partners of the present consortium (the Wolfson Centre at Brunel University and Intrinsiq Materials Ltd) developed long-life down-converting phosphors that, once proven by scaling up in demonstrators, will be used worldwide in coatings and on cells to transfer more of the sun's energy into preferred PV frequencies. In this project we will scale up DSSCs to show the effect of augmenting the natural energy available and hence enhance energy output. In addition, we will harvest the light from a third of G24i's current cell's surface that is wasted and redirect the light to the active regions of the cell, thereby aiming to achieve performance gains of ca. 25%.