Photovoltaics: Photonic Crystal-Driven Spectral Concentration for Upconversion Photovoltaics (Advanced Optical Materials 4/2015)

Photonic Crystal‐Driven Spectral Concentration for Upconversion Photovoltaics

The main challenge for applying upconversion (UC) to silicon photovoltaics is the limited amount of solar energy harvested directly via erbium-based upconverter materials (24.5 W m–2). This could be increased up to 87.7 W m–2 via spectral concentration. Due to the nonlinear behavior of UC, this could increase the best UC emission by a factor 13. In this paper, the combined use of quantum dots (QDs)—for luminescent down-shifting—and photonic crystals (PCs)—for reshaping the emission—to achieve spectral concentration is shown. This implies dealing with the coupling of colloidal QDs and PC at the high-density regime, where the modes are shifted and broadened. In the first fabricated all-optica…