Chander, Nikhil and Khan, Atif F. and Komarala, Vamsi K. and Chawla, Santa and Dutta, Viresh (2016) Enhancement of dye sensitized solar cell efficiency via incorporation of upconverting phosphor nanoparticles as spectral converters. Progress in Photovoltaics, 24 (5). 692-703. ISSN 1062-7995

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Abstract

Upconverting NaYF4:Yb3+,Er3+/NaYF4 core-shell (CS) nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized by thermal decomposition of lanthanide trifluoroacetate precursors and mixed with TiO2 NPs to fabricate dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The CS geometry effectively prevents the capture of electrons because of the surface states and improves photo-emission. The as-synthesized CS NPs show upconversion (UC) luminescence, converting near infrared (NIR) light into visible light (450-700nm), making the photon absorption by the ruthenium-based dyes (which have little or no absorption in the NIR region) possible. The champion DSSCs fabricated using CS UC NPs (average size=25nm) show enhancements of similar to 12.5% (sensitized with black/N749 dye) and of similar to 5.5% (sensitized with N719 dye) in overall power conversion efficiency under AM 1.5G illumination. This variation in the enhancement of the DSSC efficiencies for black and N719 dyes is attributed to the difference in the extinction coefficient and the absorption wavelength range of dyes. Incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency measurements also evidently showed the photocurrent enhancement in the NIR region of the spectrum because of the UC effect. The results prove that the augmentation in efficiency is primarily due to NIR to visible spectrum modification by the fluorescent UC NPs.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Copyright for this article belongs to M/s Wiley.
Subjects:	Energy Fuels Materials Science Applied Physics/Condensed Matter
Divisions:	UNSPECIFIED
Depositing User:	Dr. Rajpal Walke
Date Deposited:	17 Nov 2017 11:35
Last Modified:	17 Nov 2017 11:35
URI:	http://npl.csircentral.net/id/eprint/2206

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