Optofluidic Solar Indoor Lighting for Sustainable Buildings

A novel optofluidic beam steering technology is presented for solar indoor lighting based on electrowetting principle. Sunlight collected from building rooftop can be guided along an optical fiber and distributed into individual rooms of a building by tunable liquid prisms linearly arrayed. By adaptively controlling the prism angle, our optofluidic system is capable of tuning lighting power from 0% to 98.6% of the input solar power. This daylighting technology offers a new optofluidic approach towards sustainable buildings, not only reducing electricity usage but also providing a comfortable indoor environment with natural sunlight illumination.