Issue 37, 2018

Stable tandem luminescent solar concentrators based on CdSe/CdS quantum dots and carbon dots

Abstract

Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) serve as large-area sunlight collectors, which are suitable for applications in semi-transparent, low-cost photovoltaics. Colloidal quantum dots (QDs) are promising candidates as a new type of absorber/emitter in LSCs, due to their size-tunable wide absorption spectrum, narrow emission spectrum, high quantum yield and structure-engineered large Stokes shift. However, due to the lack of long-term photo-stability of QDs, it is still a challenge to prepare photostable LSCs. Compared with colloidal QDs, carbon dots (C-dots) exhibit excellent photo-stability, presenting a very promising solution to improve the long-term photo-stability of quantum dot based LSCs. Here, as a proof-of-concept, we report the enhancement of the photo-stability of LSCs based on CdSe/CdS QDs by using a tandem structure of LSCs. We fabricated a large-area (∼100 cm2) thin film and placed this thin film on the top of a luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) based on CdSe/CdS QDs. The as-fabricated semi-transparent tandem device exhibits an external optical efficiency of ∼1.4% under one sun illumination, which is a 16% enhancement in the efficiency over the LSC based on CdSe/CdS QDs. More importantly, the presence of C-dots largely enhances the photo-stability of the LSC device based on CdSe/CdS QDs under ultraviolet (UV) illumination. After 70 hour UV illumination, the QD-based LSC with a protective layer of C-dot thin film retains 75% of its initial integrated photoluminescence intensity, which is 1.8 times higher than that of the LSC without the C-dot layer. Our work indicates that C-dots can be used as an additional layer in LSCs to enhance both the efficiency and long-term photo-stability.

Graphical abstract: Stable tandem luminescent solar concentrators based on CdSe/CdS quantum dots and carbon dots

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
24 May 2018
Accepted
20 Aug 2018
First published
22 Aug 2018

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2018,6, 10059-10066

Stable tandem luminescent solar concentrators based on CdSe/CdS quantum dots and carbon dots

G. Liu, H. Zhao, F. Diao, Z. Ling and Y. Wang, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2018, 6, 10059 DOI: 10.1039/C8TC02532K

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