Theoretical investigation of asymmetric light interfaces for increasing optical efficiency of luminescent solar concentrators via integration of finite element simulation results with Monte Carlo ray tracing

The solar industry has reportedmassive growth in recent years and a niche market within that industry is luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs). LSCs work by concentrating light from a large surface area onto a small surface area photovoltaic cells. LSCs have long been on the fringe of commercial solar products due to their low optical efficiency (OE), which is largely caused by top surface losses. Research efforts exploring nanopatterned surfaces to modulate surface transmission are emerging to address this shortcoming. While methods exist to predict optical properties of such surfaces using finite element modeling, there are no procedures to integrate these results with ray tracing simulations and understand the effect on the optical efficiency of an LSC. This paper presents a methodology to integrate optical properties of an asymmetric light transmission interface predicted by COMSOL with Monte Carlo simulations. The integration technique was first validated with a plain air/matrix interface. Comparing the optical efficiency of an LSC with a plain interface to that of an LSC with an asymmetric light transmission interface, a significant increase was found. Part of this increase is due to the transmission difference; however, light scattering effects underneath the surface nanopattern also play an important role.