Organic luminescent molecules for luminescent down-shifting and luminescent solar concentrators

Solar cells are photovoltaic devices that covert solar energy into electricity. Although there are numerous research on solar cells, their wide application in current world is still questionable due to the low power conversion efficiency and/or output power compare to the traditional fossil energy. With altering the structures of the solar cells, one efficient and effective approach is to modify the incident solar spectrum through solar spectral shaping by organic luminescent molecules. The long-term goal is to develop efficient organic luminescent molecules for solar spectral shaping such as luminescent down-shifting for cadmium telluride solar cells and luminescent solar concentrating for silicon solar cells. The overall objective of this work is on study the relationship between the photophysical properties of the organic luminescent molecules and their solar spectral shaping capabilities, apply the organic luminescent molecules and study the performance of the solar cell device both experimentally and theoretically. The central hypothesis is that organic luminescent molecules with intramolecular charge transfer and aggregation-induced emission characteristics are good candidate for solar spectral shaping and work efficiently for luminescent down-shifting and luminescent solar concentrators. In this dissertation, we design and synthesize novel organic luminescent molecules, study their photophysical properties, fabricate the luminescent down-shifting film and luminescent solar concentrating slab and apply them on cadmium telluride solar cells and silicon solar cells, measure photovoltaic performance of these device and establish theoretical models on describe the photon conversion process of luminescent down-shifting and luminescent solar concentrators.