Modeling the Incorporation of Microbeads into Concentrator Photovoltaic Systems

Abstract

We optimize a nanostructured surface derived from glass microbeads to maximize the acceptance angle of concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) systems. Rigorous coupled wave analysis computes the transmission/scattering of the subwavelength structure, which we then couple to a ray tracing analysis to simulate the entire CPV system. We find that beads with a radius of 400-500nm demonstrate the lowest solarweighted reflectance over a wide range of incidence angles.