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 Jan 2012
Accepted
09 Feb 2012
First published
09 Feb 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

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