A silicon nanocrystal/polymer nanocomposite as a down-conversion layer in organic and hybrid solar cells

Svrcek, V. and Yamanari, T. and Mariotti, D. and Mitra, S. and Velusamy, T. and Matsubara, K. (2015) A silicon nanocrystal/polymer nanocomposite as a down-conversion layer in organic and hybrid solar cells. Nanoscale, 7 (27). pp. 11566-11574. ISSN 2040-3372 (https://doi.org/10.1039/c5nr02703a)

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Abstract

Silicon nanocrystal (Si-nc) down-conversion is demonstrated to enhance organic and hybrid organic/inorganic bulk heterojunction solar cells based on PTB7:[70]PCBM bulk heterojunction devices. Surfactant free surface-engineered Si-ncs can be integrated into the device architecture to be optically active and provide a means of effective down-conversion of blue photons (high energy photons below ∼450 nm) into red photons (above ∼680 nm) leading to 24% enhancement of the photocurrent under concentrated sunlight. We also demonstrate that the down-conversion effect under 1-sun is enhanced in the case of hybrid solar cells where engineered Si-ncs are also included in the active layer.

ORCID iDs

Svrcek, V., Yamanari, T., Mariotti, D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1504-4383, Mitra, S., Velusamy, T. and Matsubara, K.;
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