Photochemical Upconversion Enhanced Solar Cells: Effect of a Back Reflector
Tim F. Schulze A , Yuen Yap Cheng A , Burkhard Fückel A , Rowan W. MacQueen A , Andrew Danos A , Nathaniel J. L. K. Davis A , Murad J. Y. Tayebjee A , Tony Khoury A , Raphaël G. C. R. Clady A , N. J. Ekins-Daukes B , Maxwell J. Crossley A , Bernd Stannowski C , Klaus Lips D and Timothy W. Schmidt A E FA School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
B Department of Physics and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College, London, UK SW7 2AZ.
C Competence Centre Thin-Film- and Nanotechnology for Photovoltaics Berlin (PVcomB), Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
D Institute for Silicon Photovoltaics, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
E Institute of Photonics and Optical Science, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
F Corresponding author. Email: t.schmidt@chem.usyd.edu.au
Australian Journal of Chemistry 65(5) 480-485 https://doi.org/10.1071/CH12117
Submitted: 24 February 2012 Accepted: 14 March 2012 Published: 14 May 2012
Abstract
Photochemical upconversion is applied to a hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cell in the presence of a back-scattering layer. A custom-synthesized porphyrin was utilized as the sensitizer species, with rubrene as the emitter. Under a bias of 24 suns, a peak external quantum efficiency (EQE) enhancement of ~2 % was observed at a wavelength of 720 nm. Without the scattering layer, the EQE enhancement was half this value, indicating that the effect of the back-scatterer is to double the efficacy of the upconverting device. The results represent an upconversion figure of merit of 3.5 × 10–4 mA cm–2 sun–2, which is the highest reported to date.
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