Efficiency Enhancement of Solar Cells by Application of a Polymer Coating Containing a Luminescent Dye

Abstract

One of the major loss mechanisms in state of the art photovoltaic cells is spectral loss resulting from inefficient use of ultraviolet photons and the lack of absorption of infrared photons by the solar cell. For a Si solar cell, e.g., spectral losses alone result in over 55% loss of the energy of the solar spectrum. Converting the spectrum of the incoming light such that it has a better match with the absorption spectrum of the solar cell can reduce spectral losses, especially in the case of a small absorption band, such as for dye sensitized solar cells and polymer solar cells. In this paper it is shown that the ultraviolet response of a multicrystalline silicon solar cell and polymer solar cell can be enhanced by application of a polymer coating doped with a luminescent dye. An increase in the power conversion efficiency is obtained for coatings with luminescent dyes with an absorption onset <450 nm. Coatings with luminescent dyes that absorb at higher wavelengths give rise to lower power conversion efficiencies. When applied to a dye sensitized solar cell, a decrease in the cell performance is observed.

Contrasting Solid-State Fluorescence of Diynes with Small and Large Aryl Substituents: Crystal Packing Dependence and Stimuli-Responsive Fluorescence Switching

“…Their wide applications in opto-electronic materials, 1-8 solar cells, [9][10][11][12][13] non-linear optics, [14][15][16][17] and sensors [18][19][20][21][22] as well as the challenge to understand the origin of emission have kept motivated the solid state photophysics community. The packing of aromatic organic chromophores strongly impacts their solid state fluorescence.…”

Preparation and characterization of down-shifting film for silicon solar cell based on the stilben 420, PVA polymer and silver nanoparticles

“…For these purposes the chosen materials were indeed many, with the most frequent categories being polymers such as polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) [7][8][9] or poly-vinyl acetate [10,11], and they can exhibit high transparency in the visible region of the spectrum, adequate resistance to heat and humidity variations, and high mechanical strength [12]. They also provide very good host environment for organic dye molecules [13].…”

“…A large number of luminescent materials have been investigated for LDS and can be separated into three main categories: quantum dots (QDs) [14][15][16][17][18], organic dyes [7][8][9] and rare-earth ions/complexes [19][20][21].…”

Printable luminescent down shifter for enhancing efficiency and stability of organic photovoltaics

“…Whilst the potential for efficiency and stability enhancements via LDS layers have been reported in a wide range of PV technologies, including Dye Sensitised Solar Cells (DSSCs) [9], there are only a limited number of studies that have been carried out on OPV materials [10] and devices [11,12,13]. In particular, Sloff et al and Engmann et al have reported promising results that show a photocurrent improvement by applying LDS layers in OPVs, but the stability issue was not addressed.…”