First Demonstration of the Applicability of the Latent Pigment Approach to Plastic Luminescent Solar Concentrators

Planar luminescent solar concentrators are slabs of high optical quality materials doped with luminophores. Such devices enable the collection of solar light over a large area, followed by concentrated emission at the slab edges due to total internal reflection. The luminophore plays a central role as it is responsible for light absorption over the largest possible fraction of the solar spectrum and efficient emission. We show how the latent pigment approach makes it possible to prepare bulk-polymerized single-layer luminescent solar concentrators doped with the high performance pigments quinacridone and perylenediimide. The process is advantageous in terms of overall synthetic efficiency for both quinacridone and perylendiimide. In the former case a sizeable improvement in photostability is also demonstrated.