Efficiency of a micro-bubble reflector based, self-adaptive waveguide solar concentrator

State of the art solar concentrators use free-space, non-imaging optics to concentrate sunlight. Mechanical actuators keep the focal spot on a small solar cell by tracking the sun's position. Planar concentrators emerged recently that employ a waveguide slab to achieve high concentration by coupling the incident sunlight into the waveguide. We report on the development of an opto-fluidic waveguide coupling mechanism for planar solar concentration. The self-adaptive mechanism is light-responsive to efficiently maintain waveguide coupling and concentration independent of incoming light's direction. By using an array of axicons and lenses, an array of vapor bubbles are generated inside a planar, liquid waveguide, one for each axicon-lens pair. The mechanism uses the infrared part of the solar spectrum on an infrared absorbing medium to provide the energy needed for bubble generation. Visible light focused onto the bubble is then reflected by total internal reflection (TIR) at the liquid-gas interface and coupled into the waveguide. Vapor bubbles inside the liquid are trapped by a thermal effect and are shown to self-track the location of the infrared focus. We show experimental results on the coupling efficiency of a single bubble and discuss the effect of angular coupling. Furthermore the effect of an array of bubbles inside the waveguide (as produced by a lensarray) onto the coupling efficiency and concentration factor is analyzed.