title: A silicon nanocrystal/polymer nanocomposite as a down-conversion layer in organic and hybrid solar cells.
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.
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Photovoltaic Technologies, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Central 2, Umezono 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305-8568, Japan. vladimir.svrcek@aist.go.jp.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Svrcek
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yamanari
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mariotti
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mitra
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Velusamy
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Matsubara