Physorg March 1, 2018
Researchers in Germany modeled the new light-harvesting funnels on nature’s design. The devices consist of many randomly oriented “donor” pigments that can absorb light from nearly all incident angles and funnel it onto a smaller number of “acceptor” molecules that are all oriented in a single direction to direct the light onto a photoconversion device. This concept can reduce the intrinsic losses of previous solar concentrators to below 10%. In tests the solar concentrator absorbed approximately 99% of the incident light, with minimal losses due to reabsorption and reflection. The device also has a light redirection quantum efficiency of 80%… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Randomly oriented light-harvesting pigments (green) funnel the sun’s energy to other molecules (red) that all have the same orientation, which direct the energy onto a photoconversion device. Credit: Pieper et al. Published in Nature Communications