Transforming light into energy and energy into light

The ARC Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Exci­ton Sci­ence brings to­gether in­ter­na­tio­n­al re­search­ers to dis­cov­er and use new ways to source en­er­gy. The goal of this co­op­er­a­tion is to dis­cov­er and de­vel­op new ways to har­ness sun­light for en­er­gy stor­age; de­vel­op more en­er­gy ef­fi­cient de­vices for light gen­er­a­tion; and al­so look at op­ti­cal sen­sors for se­cu­ri­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal ap­pli­ca­tions. BAU KUNST ERFIN­D­EN de­vel­ops the in­te­gra­tion of dye-sen­si­tized so­lar cells (DSCs) in­to pre­fab­ri­cat­ed con­crete seg­ments. Ar­eas of ap­pli­ca­tion in­clude ar­chi­tec­tu­ral and prod­uct de­sign, as well as dig­i­tal fab­ri­ca­tion and con­struc­tion.

Dye-Sen­si­tized So­lar Con­crete re­places the glass-based coun­ter­elec­trode with con­crete. Since the con­crete sub­s­trate is chem­i­cal­ly, elec­trotech­ni­cal­ly, me­chan­i­cal­ly, and ge­o­met­ri­cal­ly in con­tact and in­di­rect in­ter­ac­tion with all other cell com­po­nents, the cell ar­chi­tec­ture is a cen­tral com­po­nent of this in­no­va­tive con­cept. The cell ar­chi­tec­ture defines the po­si­tion and lay­out of each func­tio­n­al lay­er and sub­s­trate within the cell. It is thus crit­i­cal to the func­tio­n­al­i­ty, dura­bil­i­ty, and per­for­mance of the Dye-Sen­si­tized So­lar Con­crete cell, and al­so forms the ba­sis for in­te­grat­ing pre­sent-day and next-gen­er­a­tion pho­toac­tive lay­er sys­tems in­to con­crete and other opaque sub­s­trate ma­te­rials.

Publi­ca­tion:
Sami­ra Ja­ma Aden¹,³, Re­bec­ca A. Mil­huisen²,³, Muham­mad Kal­im Kashif ²,³, Udo Bach²,³, Heike Kluss­mann¹,³ (2020) Dye-Sen­si­tized So­lar Con­crete. In: C. Leopold, C. Ro­beller & U. We­ber (Hrsg.), Re­search cul­ture in ar­chi­tec­ture (247-254), Basel: Birkhäuse

¹ Bau Kunst Erfin­d­en, Uni­ver­si­ty of Kas­sel, Ger­many ² Mo­nash Uni­ver­si­ty, Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia ³ ARC Cen­ter of Ex­cel­lence in Exci­ton Sci­ence, Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia

Sami­ra Ja­ma Aden, Prof. Udo Bach and Prof. Heike Kluss­mann with a pro­to­type of a Dye-Sen­si­tized So­lar Con­crete fa­cade el­e­ment (100 × 100 cm)

Fund­ing: