Rice University engineers have suggested a colorful solution to next-generation energy collection: Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) in your windows.
Rice University engineers have suggested a colorful solution to next-generation energy collection: Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) in your windows.
Led by Rafael Verduzco and postdoctoral researcher and lead author Yilin Li of Rice’s Brown School of Engineering, the team designed and built foot-square “windows” that sandwich a conjugated polymer between two clear acrylic panels.
That thin middle layer is the secret sauce. It’s designed to absorb light in a specific wavelength and guide it to panel edges lined with solar cells. Conjugated polymers are chemical compounds that can be tuned with specific chemical or physical properties for a variety of applications, like conductive films or sensors for biomedical devices.
Read more at: Rice University
Rice University engineers designed and built windowpanes that redirect sunlight or illumination from indoors to edge-band solar cells. The central layer is a conjugated polymer that serves as a waveguide. (Photo Credit: Yilin Li/Rice University)
