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

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)一期项目旨在将上下转换材料集成到单个光子器件中，以解决太阳能光谱与由硅等单一吸收体形成的太阳能电池之间的不匹配问题。稀土掺杂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。通过集成上转换和下转换材料，这种方法不仅将提高吸收带隙上下的量子效率，而且还可以弥补上变频器中与下转换相关的损失。在这个项目中，为固体激光器开发的氟基材料将专门用于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/商业影响将是显著提高太阳能电池的能源转换效率的潜力。这项工作中解决的光谱失配是到达太阳能电池的能量损失50%的原因。此外，这项技术不需要更改太阳能电池或电气连接。因此，这种光学产品集成到太阳能系统中是直截了当的。

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.