Luminescent Solar Concentrators – The Solar Waveguides

This study aims at giving a prologue to the nontracking, concentrating solar waveguides called luminescent solar concentrators. It deliberates the major factors of loss in such systems that limit photon collection and conversion efficiency. Identifying fluorescent molecules possessing a larger Stokes shift value with a broad degree of absorption in the UV-Vis continuum, with sharper and narrower near infra-red emission spectra at a higher quantum yield that achieves a perpetual total internal reflection, remains a challenge now. Geometrical and material properties also play a strategic role in accomplishing waveguides, with minimal loss, through total internal reflection of trapped photons for photovoltaic conversion.