dc.description.abstract | With the increasing demand for green energy, heat generation and storage turned to be one of the most popular issues, regarding to particularly important environment protection and electric generator exploit. In the utilization of natural energy, sunlight becomes the mainstream for research. However, due to Shockley–Queisser limit, opto-electric conversion efficiency has upper limit. So far, the conversion efficiency of most commercially available solar cell is no greater than 30%, and most of the energy is dissipated in the form of heat. Therefore, in this study, the devices of pthotothermal conversion are focused with the advent of various nanocompsites and nanostructures. The efficiency of photothermal conversion can be raised as higher as 70% in the recent studies. Even in some researches, the efficiency of photothermal conversion can reach to 97%. Because of the relatively high efficiency based on the property of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), the composite of Ag NPs embedded in soda-lime glass has the great potential in storage of energy and heat generation.
In this research, two-step ion exchange method is applied, providing simple and inexpensive fabrication for the desired composites. In order to red-shift the LSPR of the composite to the wavelength of commercially available LED and continuous (CW) laser, dual-wavelength laser processing at 800 nm and 400 nm are carried out, leading to the transformation and re-growth of spherical Ag NPs into ellipsoids by inducing color centers inside the composite. Indeed, the absorption of the composite increases the temperature rise and exhibits much higher temperature than that of a pure glass within only a few minutes. Upon the irradiation by a green LED (= 515 nm), the experimental results in the research are in close agreement with the simulation by Boundary Element Method (BEM).
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