There is now a true international economic competition to develop strategic and socio-economic solutions to manage our energy independence as well as our production of greenhouse gas emissions. One of them concerns the production of future low cost solar cells having high conversion efficiency, with the objective of achieving production costs below € 0.5/W by 2030 in Europe. It is in this context that the GENESE project proposes an original approach to allow the conversion of light using a combination of Atomic scale Si sensitizers and/or Ag nanoparticles and rare earth ions coupled to a nanostructuration of the substrate. The objectives are (i) to determine the feasibility of such structures for frequency conversion, and (ii) to identify the most promising structure for sensor such that it benefits from a high absorption cross section and an engineering of the spectral absorption. Such sensors offer a high potential for economic development since the different pathways studied in this project are compatible with the photovoltaic industry.