Advantages of Luminescent Solar Concentrators

Anyhow, the LSC activity within each of the two or more plates is based on the same phenomenon of total reflection14,15 outside the critical cone. Once a light ray is totally reflected, it continues an indefinite number of total reflections on the three conditions of two absolutely planar parallel surfaces of the plate, and absence of (even very weak) absorption and of scattering due to turbidity, air bubbles, and so on. On the other hand, nearly all the luminescence irradiated inside the critical cone is lost through the surfaces of the plate16. The narrow air gap between the upper and the second plate seen on Fig. 2 is a necessary isolation preventing trapped luminescence in the upper plate to penetrate into the lower plate and getting absorbed. 

2) High collection efficiency of diffuse light. If the incoming radiation is misdirected by arriving under an angle on the plate, the trapped flux is only multiplied by (sin ) which is still 0.9848 for 1 = 80° and 0.9397 for = 70° representing typical values of misdirection. 

3) Good heat dissipation from large areas of the LSC plate in contact with air, preventing unnecessary heating of the convertor device, known to have deleterious effects8,9) on silicon cells. 

4) Choice of the luminescent species allows optimalization of the concentrated light to the maximum spectral sensitivity of the light-converting device (which may perform other photochemical reactions than a photovoltaic cell). 

5) The relatively low efficiency of solar cells exposed to white light can be circumvented by using LSC as beam splitters and couple them to photovoltaic cells with optimum sensitivities in different spectral ranges, and hence using the solar spectrum in a more efficient fashion. 

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