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Biomimetic light-harvesting funnels for re-directioning of diffuse light

Efficient sunlight harvesting and re-directioning onto small areas has great potential for more widespread use of precious high-performance photovoltaics but so far intrinsic solar concentrator loss mechanisms outweighed the benefits. Here we present an antenna concept allowing high light absorption...

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Autores principales: Pieper, Alexander, Hohgardt, Manuel, Willich, Maximilian, Gacek, Daniel Alexander, Hafi, Nour, Pfennig, Dominik, Albrecht, Andreas, Walla, Peter Jomo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5812990/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29445168
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03103-4
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author Pieper, Alexander
Hohgardt, Manuel
Willich, Maximilian
Gacek, Daniel Alexander
Hafi, Nour
Pfennig, Dominik
Albrecht, Andreas
Walla, Peter Jomo
author_facet Pieper, Alexander
Hohgardt, Manuel
Willich, Maximilian
Gacek, Daniel Alexander
Hafi, Nour
Pfennig, Dominik
Albrecht, Andreas
Walla, Peter Jomo
author_sort Pieper, Alexander
collection PubMed
description Efficient sunlight harvesting and re-directioning onto small areas has great potential for more widespread use of precious high-performance photovoltaics but so far intrinsic solar concentrator loss mechanisms outweighed the benefits. Here we present an antenna concept allowing high light absorption without high reabsorption or escape-cone losses. An excess of randomly oriented pigments collects light from any direction and funnels the energy to individual acceptors all having identical orientations and emitting ~90% of photons into angles suitable for total internal reflection waveguiding to desired energy converters (funneling diffuse-light re-directioning, FunDiLight). This is achieved using distinct molecules that align efficiently within stretched polymers together with others staying randomly orientated. Emission quantum efficiencies can be >80% and single-foil reabsorption <0.5%. Efficient donor-pool energy funneling, dipole re-orientation, and ~1.5–2 nm nearest donor–acceptor transfer occurs within hundreds to ~20 ps. Single-molecule 3D-polarization experiments confirm nearly parallel emitters. Stacked pigment selection may allow coverage of the entire solar spectrum.
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spelling pubmed-58129902018-02-16 Biomimetic light-harvesting funnels for re-directioning of diffuse light Pieper, Alexander Hohgardt, Manuel Willich, Maximilian Gacek, Daniel Alexander Hafi, Nour Pfennig, Dominik Albrecht, Andreas Walla, Peter Jomo Nat Commun Article Efficient sunlight harvesting and re-directioning onto small areas has great potential for more widespread use of precious high-performance photovoltaics but so far intrinsic solar concentrator loss mechanisms outweighed the benefits. Here we present an antenna concept allowing high light absorption without high reabsorption or escape-cone losses. An excess of randomly oriented pigments collects light from any direction and funnels the energy to individual acceptors all having identical orientations and emitting ~90% of photons into angles suitable for total internal reflection waveguiding to desired energy converters (funneling diffuse-light re-directioning, FunDiLight). This is achieved using distinct molecules that align efficiently within stretched polymers together with others staying randomly orientated. Emission quantum efficiencies can be >80% and single-foil reabsorption <0.5%. Efficient donor-pool energy funneling, dipole re-orientation, and ~1.5–2 nm nearest donor–acceptor transfer occurs within hundreds to ~20 ps. Single-molecule 3D-polarization experiments confirm nearly parallel emitters. Stacked pigment selection may allow coverage of the entire solar spectrum. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-02-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5812990/ /pubmed/29445168 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03103-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Pieper, Alexander
Hohgardt, Manuel
Willich, Maximilian
Gacek, Daniel Alexander
Hafi, Nour
Pfennig, Dominik
Albrecht, Andreas
Walla, Peter Jomo
Biomimetic light-harvesting funnels for re-directioning of diffuse light
title Biomimetic light-harvesting funnels for re-directioning of diffuse light
title_full Biomimetic light-harvesting funnels for re-directioning of diffuse light
title_fullStr Biomimetic light-harvesting funnels for re-directioning of diffuse light
title_full_unstemmed Biomimetic light-harvesting funnels for re-directioning of diffuse light
title_short Biomimetic light-harvesting funnels for re-directioning of diffuse light
title_sort biomimetic light-harvesting funnels for re-directioning of diffuse light
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5812990/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29445168
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03103-4
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