Single stage transmission type broadband solar concentrator

In this paper, a single stage solar cell concentrator is designed and discussed. The proposed concentrator consists of refraction prisms and total internal reflection prisms in the inner and outer areas, respectively. In order to compensate for dispersion, all odd zones gather the light onto the - D position, while all even zones gather the light onto the + D position. Finally, the hybrid concentrator achieves optical efficiency of 89.8% for normally incident light without an antireflection coating. An acceptance angle of +/- 0.78 degrees at 1dB loss is achieved without using additional secondary optics. In addition, the fabrication tolerance is also analyzed. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America