Spectrally and angle‐resolved emission of thin film fluorescence collectors

Fluorescence collectors (FSCs) offer the possibility to collect and concentrate direct and ambient light and are, thereby, an option to decrease the cost of high‐efficiency solar modules. So far, scattering, absorption and reabsorption of the incoming and fluorescence light cannot be discriminated completely in experiments. Thus, the contribution to the discrepancy of experimentally achieved efficiencies from the theoretical one has not been identified. To understand the propagation of the fluorescence light by illumination at a certain distance from the edge of the FSC, we have developed a two‐dimensional analytical model based on geometrical optics that reproduces the experimental results. Under certain conditions for each distance from the edge regimes of detection angles exist for which no fluorescence light of the edge occurs. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.