Using amorphous silicon solar cells to boost the viability of luminescent solar concentrators

We have, for the first time, designed and fabricated hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cells to be used in conjunction with Luminescent Solar Concentrators (LSCs). LSCs are planar plastic sheets doped with organic dyes that absorb solar illumination and down shift the energy to narrowband luminescence which is collected by solar cells attached to the sheet edge. We fabricated an LSC module with two bonded solar cells and performed characterisation with the cells connected in series and parallel configurations. We find that the LSC module has an optical collection efficiency of 9.5% and an optimum power conversion efficiency of approaching 1% when the cells are in a parallel connection.