Fluorescent plastic waveguides for photovoltaic energy conversion

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Cost-effective access to renewable energy sources, and in particular solar energy, is of critical importance for maintaining global economic growth, while minimizing negative environmental impacts. The solar radiation that reaches our planet account for ca. 10,000 X the world's energy needs, but only 0.001% of our energy is made from this source. Photovoltaic (PV) devices can conveniently convert energy of solar photon flux into electricity. PV devices based on crystalline silicon (Si) and some other inorganic semiconductors offer excellent power conversion efficiency and unsurpassed stability; however, they are very expensive, particularly for large area/high capacity applications. Organic PV devices, based on polymer semiconductors, can be less expensive; however, they show much lower efficiency and, more importantly, very limited stability. In this proposal we suggest ways to engineer a hybrid device in which low-cost plastic solar waveguide concentrators collects the radiation from a large area and transmit the light to a high efficiency but small area PV device (such as crystalline Si-PV). The device operation is based on how a fluorescent dye absorbs an incoming photon (regardless of the incident angle) and preferentially re-emits it into the waveguide modes, which deliver it to a PV cell at the edge of the plastic film. Although the idea has been postulated a few decades ago, only in the last year has the feasibility of such concentrators (on solid glass supports) been demonstrated. This project will bring together the expertise in dye chemistry and photophysics, photonic waveguides and plastic optoelectronics to demonstrate an efficient and inexpensive solar concentrator based on