The narrow spectral response of the current photovoltaic (PV) technologies determines their low specific power (W/kg) and high costs per Watt, curtailing the growth of the satellite (backhaul) market. Plasmonic enhanced luminescent down-shifting (PLDS) represents a passive design strategy which increases the PVs’ spectral responsivity through the application of a semi-transparent, fluorescent, polymer nanocomposite layer onto the PV cell. The additional loss pathways enabled by the PLDS layer’s integration can be mitigated by antireflection (ARC) thin films tuned to match the PLDS optical properties, leading to structured enhanced (SE)-PLDS concentrators that can increase the PV specific power. The Dublin Energy Lab (DEL) in TUDublin developed and tested retrofittable nanocomposite SE-PLDS concentrators (e.g. containing metal nanoparticles, fluorescent species, polymers and spectrally matched oxide/metal/oxide ARCs) which can enhance the light trapping efficiency by 34% – 66% depending on the energy band-gap of the tested PV. Proof-of-concept preliminary results showed an increased optical efficiency leading to a 21% to 52% enhancement in the measured photocurrent of retrofitted mc-Si PVs, while up to 43% photocurrent enhancement is predicted for GaAs PVs. Thus, the SE-PLDS architecture can lead to 0.9 – 1.1 kW/kg, but further improvements are possible. The SE-PLDS flexible design can accommodate various plasmonic particles, spectral convertors and optical concentrators allowing to create a new class of luminescent solar concentrators (LSC). Once the new LSC technology is developed, a combination of theoretical and experimental approaches will be used to optimise the multiple system elements and achieve high-performance solar PV arrays with up to 1.8 – 2 kW/kg. By exploiting synergetic light-trapping mechanisms within the structure’s design an increase in the existing PV performance could be obtained allowing additional cost and weight savings.
