Markvart, Tomas and Danos, Lefteris and Fang, Liping and Parel, Thomas and Soleimani, Nazila (2012) Photon frequency management for trapping & concentration of sunlight. RSC Advances, 2 (8). pp. 3173-3179.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
This paper considers a range of techniques which – within the realm of classical optics – can be used to enhance light capture as a first step in photovoltaic energy conversion. Examples include a simple case of downshifting, fluorescent collectors which reduce the size of a light beam, and a novel form of light trapping to increase the path length of light within the solar cell. The results are discussed using a thermodynamic framework where the energy exchange with an absorbing/fluorescent medium allows the entropy of the captured photon gas to be lowered, reducing the étendue of the emitted beam. We show that frequency management represents a powerful tool, allowing enhancement in light trapping above the Yablononovitch limit, leading to potentially highly efficient but very thin crystalline silicon solar cells.