A luminescent solar concentrator is an emerging sunlight harvesting technology that has the potential to disrupt the way we think about energy; It could turn any window into a daytime power source.
"In these devices, a fraction of light transmitted through the window is absorbed by nanosized particles (semiconductor quantum dots) dispersed in a glass window, re-emitted at the infrared wavelength invisible to the human eye, and wave-guided to a solar cell at the edge of the window," said Victor Klimov, lead researcher on the project at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory. "Using this design, a nearly transparent window becomes an electrical generator, one that can power your room's air conditioner on a hot day or a heater on a cold one."
This is what becomes possible with new devices – quantum dot LSCs –which will be available in the journal Nature Nanotechnology in the study "Highly efficient large-area colourless luminescent solar concentrators using heavy-metal-free colloidal quantum dots". The work was performed by researchers at the Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics (CASP) of Los Alamos, led by Klimov and the research team coordinated by Sergio Brovelli and Francesco Meinardi of the Department of Materials Science of the University of Milan-Bicocca (UNIMIB) in Italy.
To read more, click here.