Cheng, Y.Y.; Nattestad, A.; Schulze, T.F.; MacQueen, R.W.; Fuckel, B.; Lips, K.; Wallace, G.G.; Khoury, T.; Crossley, M.J.; Schmidt, T.W.: Increased upconversion performance for thin film solar cells: a trimolecular composition. Chemical Science 7 (2016), p. 559-568
10.1039/c5sc03215f
Open Access Version
Abstract:
Photochemical upconversion based on triplet–triplet annihilation (TTA-UC) is employed to enhance the short-circuit currents generated by two varieties of thin-film solar cells, a hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) solar cell and a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC). TTA-UC is exploited to harvest transmitted sub-bandgap photons, combine their energies and re-radiate upconverted photons back towards the solar cells. In the present study we employ a dual-emitter TTA-UC system which allows for significantly improved UC quantum yields as compared to the previously used single-emitter TTA systems. In doing so we achieve record photo-current enhancement values for both the a-Si:H device and the DSC, surpassing 10-3 mA cm-2 sun-2 for the first time for a TTA-UC system and marking a record for upconversion-enhanced solar cells in general. We discuss pertinent challenges of the TTA-UC technology which need to be addressed in order to achieve its viable device application.