title: Electromagnetic simulations of a photonic luminescent solar concentrator.
abstract: Luminescent solar concentrators (LSC) are used in photovoltaic applications to concentrate direct and diffuse sunlight without tracking. We employed 2D FDTD simulations to investigate the concept of a photonic LSC (PLSC), where the luminescent material is embedded in a photonic crystal to mitigate the primary losses in LSCs: the escape cone and reabsorption. We obtain suppressed emission inside the photonic band gap, which can be utilized to reduce reabsorption. Furthermore, the efficiency of light guiding is strongly enhanced in a broad spectral range, reaching up to 99.7%. Our optimization of design parameters suggests emitting layers of sub-wavelength thickness.
authors.affiliation: Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Heidenhofstrasse 2, 79110 Freiburg, Germany. johannes.gutmann@ise.fraunhofer.de
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gutmann
authors.forename: Marius
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Peters
authors.forename: Benedikt
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bläsi
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hermle
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gombert
authors.forename: Hans
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zappe
authors.forename: Jan Christoph
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Goldschmidt