Solar concentrators for solar thermal renewable energy generation track sunlight through the sky and concentrate that energy into a focal point to drive an engine (e.g solar cell or steam turbine). Tracking is performed using a large number of mechanical systems that enable the physical movement of optical components (mirrors, lenses) in the solar concentrator array to maintain the desired efficiency at the engine as the sun moves across the sky. These large, bulky mechanical systems are widely prone to failure and very costly to maintain, drastically reducing the return on investment in such plants.
This project centres around the design/fabrication of reconfigurable fully-solid-state solar concentrators made from chalcogenide metasurfaces that enable the reconfiguration of their reflection response from specular to diffuse and control over the direction of reflection to provide unprecedented control over the solar thermal conversion efficiency without the need for any mechanical components for tracking. Tracking will be done by electrically adjusting the effective index of the metasurface phase, providing full two-axis tracking with no moving parts.