Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) are light‐management devices able to harvest and downshift sunlight, making it available to edge‐coupled photovoltaic cells for light‐to‐electricity conversion. When operating in real‐life outdoor scenarios, LSCs can be exposed to humid/freezing environments which may yield fogging and frosting, ultimately resulting in detrimental performance decay owing to reduced photon absorption and photon trapping efficiency within the waveguide. To address this issue, the first demonstration of an antifogging/frost‐resisting highly efficient thin‐film LSC is presented in this work, based on a tailored semi‐interpenetrating polymer network serving as the host matrix material, where the antifogging behavior is imparted by the simultaneous presence of hydrophilic and hydrophobic segments in the macromolecular structure, whereas the fluorescent response is achieved via the incorporation of a coumarin‐functionalized methacrylic monomer. By judicious selection and compositional tuning of an additional luminescent guest dopant with excellent spectral match with the fluorescent host matrix, highly efficient (≈98%) energy transfer is achieved. Optimized LSC devices exhibit external and internal photon efficiencies as high as 3.96% and 34.79%, respectively. In addition, persistent and reproducible antifogging/frost‐resisting functionality is demonstrated during aggressive aging tests under UV‐light, with preserved fluorescence emission and prolonged and sustained device efficiency.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.