Descrizione del progetto
Nuovi modi elettromagnetici aumentano le prestazioni dei concentratori solari luminescenti
Aumentare l’area di raccolta dei raggi solari per la produzione di elettricità potrebbe incrementare considerevolmente la nostra capacità di produzione energetica. I concentratori solari luminescenti sono lastre trasparenti di vetro o plastica con materiali luminescenti incorporati che assorbono la luce e poi diventano fluorescenti, creando un bagliore che si propaga ai margini di tali concentratori fino alle celle solari. La combinazione di materiale di raccolta economico per grandi superfici e tecnologia di celle solari costose per piccole superfici ha un grande potenziale, ma l’attenuazione della guida d’onda ne ha limitato le dimensioni a pochi centimetri. Il progetto HyMoCo, finanziato dal Consiglio europeo della ricerca, svilupperà una nuova guida d’onda che sfrutta le cosiddette modalità ibride dei nodi con perdite della guida d’onda estremamente basse per consentire efficienza, dimensione e costo senza precedenti.
Obiettivo
The meaning of solar energy for future decentralized power supply will largely depend on both efficiency and cost of solar to electrical power conversion. All kinds of conversion strategies including photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, solar to fuel and others would benefit from efficiently collecting solar power on large areas. For this reason luminescent solar concentrators have been developed for over thirty years, but due to waveguide losses their maximum size is still limited to a few centimeters.
The proposed project suggests the exploitation of a new type of electromagnetic waveguide in order to realize passive planar concentrators of unsurpassed collection efficiency, size, concentration, lifetime and costs.
A dielectric TE1-mode shows a node, a position in the waveguide where no intensity is found. A thin film placed in this node remains largely “invisible” for the propagating mode. Such dielectric node modes (DNMs) have been investigated by the applicant in previous work, but only recently a silver island film (SIF) was for the first time placed in such a node. The resulting extremely low waveguide losses cannot be explained by our current understanding of waveguide modes and hint to a hybridization between the SIF-bound long-range surface plasmon polaritons (LRSPPs) and the DNMs into what we call hybrid node modes (HNMs).
The SIFs strongly interact with incident light. An appropriate nanopatterning of SIFs enables efficient excitation of low-loss HNMs modes collecting solar power over square meters and concentrating it. To achieve this goal new technological methods are used that enable patterning on the nanometer scale and low cost roll-to-roll processing at the same time. New measurement techniques and numerical simulation tools will be developed to investigate the HNMs – a novel kind of electromagnetic modes – and their exploitation in the passive solar concentrators.
Campo scientifico
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energysolar energy
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcoating and films
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materialsbulk nanostructured materials
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwaresoftware applicationssimulation software
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticslaser physics
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-STG - Starting GrantIstituzione ospitante
42119 Wuppertal
Germania