Light Concentration via Waveguide Surface Curvature

Open Access
- Author:
- Mcgowan, Joshua Bradley
- Area of Honors:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Noel Christopher Giebink, Thesis Supervisor
Henry Joseph Sommer III, Thesis Honors Advisor
Christine Masters, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- LSC
waveguide
Luminescent Solar Concentrator
Solar Concentration
Solar Energy
design modeling - Abstract:
- The Sun radiates the earth with enough energy to offset humanity's needs 20,000 times over, yet solar energy accounts for very little of our energy production. This is because solar technology has not yet advanced to the point of economic viability, with solar power costing the consumer several times that of traditional power generation methods. In theory, one way of bringing the vast amounts of untapped solar energy into the realm of economic viability is by the use of Luminescent Solar Concentrators: relatively cheap waveguides that concentrate the solar energy of a large area onto a solar cell a fraction of its size. However, LSC's have not yet come even close to realizing their potential efficiencies, and still are not efficient enough to make solar power cost-effective. One approach to increasing the efficiency of LSC's is to tailor their shape, which currently is predominantly a flat planar lens, to take advantage of surface topography in order to guide internally reflected light most optimally to solar cells. This thesis aims to develop an analytical tool for optimizing surface topography in this way. A mathematical model is derived to design the necessary surface topography of a waveguide in order to achieve a desired path of internally reflected light within it. This model is embedded in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for ease of use and is tested against Zemax, a ray-tracing software that is an optics industry standard, for accuracy.