Photon transport in fluorescent solar concentrators

Fluorescent solar concentrators can concentrate light onto solar cells by trapping fluorescence through total internal reflection. The configuration wherein a fluorescent solar concentrator is surrounded by four edge mounted solar cells mitigates some of the losses seen in a single solar cell configuration. One of the major obstacles to efficient photon transport in these devices is re-absorption, therefore the reabsorption probability of trapped photons in a four solar cell configuration has been modelled in order to obtain the optical quantum efficiency of these devices. The differences between this configuration and the single solar cell configuration has also been highlighted by comparing the angular distribution of the reabsorption probabilities and photon fluxes in both configurations. Theoretical modeling and experimental work of these devices will be presented in this paper.