Issue 5, 2012

Improving the light-harvesting of amorphous silicon solar cells with photochemical upconversion

Abstract

Single-threshold solar cells are fundamentally limited by their ability to harvest only those photons above a certain energy. Harvesting below-threshold photons and re-radiating this energy at a shorter wavelength would thus boost the efficiency of such devices. We report an increase in light harvesting efficiency of a hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin-film solar cell due to a rear upconvertor based on sensitized triplet–triplet-annihilation in organic molecules. Low energy light in the range 600–750 nm is converted to 550–600 nm light due to the incoherent photochemical process. A peak efficiency enhancement of (1.0 ± 0.2)% at 720 nm is measured under irradiation equivalent to (48 ± 3) suns (AM1.5). We discuss the pathways to be explored in adapting photochemical UC for application in various single threshold devices.

Graphical abstract: Improving the light-harvesting of amorphous silicon solar cells with photochemical upconversion

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
17 1月 2012
Accepted
09 2月 2012
First published
09 2月 2012

Energy Environ. Sci., 2012,5, 6953-6959

Improving the light-harvesting of amorphous silicon solar cells with photochemical upconversion

Y. Y. Cheng, B. Fückel, R. W. MacQueen, T. Khoury, R. G. C. R. Clady, T. F. Schulze, N. J. Ekins-Daukes, M. J. Crossley, B. Stannowski, K. Lips and T. W. Schmidt, Energy Environ. Sci., 2012, 5, 6953 DOI: 10.1039/C2EE21136J

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements