© 2019 Bolong Zhang ; A luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) is a type of light harvesting device, showing potential as an alternative to the traditional photovoltaics (PV). A typical LSC consists of a planar waveguide system embedded with fluorophores, which absorb light incident on the surface and confines the emission to the edges. As the surface area of the LSC is much bigger than the edge area, the incident light can be concentrated. A PV cell attached to the edge will convert the output light into electricity. Although there are many advantages of LSCs, the unsatisfactory efficiency of LSCs still limits their wide applications. There are four major energy loss pathways of LSCs, which are 1. the photoluminescence quantum efficiency (PLQY) loss, 2. the escape cone loss, 3. the re-absorption effect and 4. the transmittance loss. The donor-emitter fluorophore pair system can potentially improve the performance of LSCs via multiple aspects, in particular, reducing the re-absorption effect. The donor-emitter fluorophore pair is a biomimetic system inspired by the light-harvesting antenna from the natural photosynthesis where a light absorbing donor harvests the incident light and transfers the energy to the acceptor (or emitter), via mainly the Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) process. By carefully tuning the concentration ratio of the donor and the emitter, one can achieve a fluorophore pair system that is mainly comprised of the donor’s absorption spectrum and the emitter’s emission spectrum. Consequently, the spectral overlap between the absorption and emission spectra of the fluorophore pair can be minimized, leading to a reduction of the re-absorption effect. By using specially engineered donor-emitter pairs one can reduce not only the re-absorption effect but also the escape cone loss and the PLQY loss. To build a highly efficient donor-emitter fluorophore pair system, the concentration of both the donor and the emitter are required to be high enough to fulfill the requirement of the FRET process. ...