Cr-Doped Mullite for Solar Concentrators

3 Applications for Luminescent Gloss-Ceramics 4.3.3.7 Cr-Doped Mullite for Solar Concentrators 

In solar engineering, sunlight is transformed into other useful forms of energy, such as electricity. For this purpose transparent materials may be desired. At the same time, these materials must enable the transfer of energy. Glass-ceramics can exhibit both high transmission and luminescent optical properties. 

For applications of this kind, mullite, 3Al203 2Si02, glass-ceramics with chromium ions as luminescent centers were developed (Beall 1992,1993). The composition of this glass-ceramic is described in Section 2.2.1 and the formation of its microstructure in Section 3.2.5. The special features of this material were developed on the basis of the applications described in this section. 

Apart from using this mullite glass-ceramic for luminescent solar concentrators, it was also intended for laser applications, such as gain media of high-power lasers. Both applications of the glass-ceramic require the development of similar properties. These properties are  

These requirements have been met in the development of glass-ceramics. An effective production process in technical dimensions has been developed. Furthermore, most of the required properties have also been achieved. 

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