Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) uses lenses or mirrors to concentrate sunlight before converting it to high-temperature thermal energy. One potentially promising class of solar concentrator is the Fresnel lens, which can be manufactured at high volume and very low cost. However, concept development and rapid prototyping of Fresnel lenses has traditionally been challenging due to the need for expensive ultra-precision CNC machining even for one-off prototypes.

In this project you will use NTNU’s UpNano NanoOne 3D printer to develop an efficient rapid prototyping process for customized Fresnel lenses. The NanoOne employs two-photon polymerization, enabling 3D printing with submicron resolution and nanometer scale surface roughness. You will explore how this can be used to fabricate wafer-scale Fresnel lenses, evaluating different material choices and characterizing the printing speed and resulting lens quality.

The fabricated Fresnel lenses will be used to prototype étendue squeezing and étendue rotating lenses — recent developments in the field of Nonimaging Optics that promise improvement performance for line-focus solar concentrators.

Preferred qualifications

• Interest in rapid prototyping and experience with photolithography or 3D printing

• Some experience with geometrical optics or nonimaging optics

• Interest in renewable energy and solar energy

Workload:
Specialization Project (15 ECTS) and Master thesis (30 ECTS)

Contact
Håkon J. D. Johnsen, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, hakon.j.d.johnsen@ntnu.no