The silicon solar cells on the market today fall short of absorbing all of the energy available in sunlight. In order to improve the efficiency of these photovoltaic cells, we have developed a system that is capable of capturing and putting to work the energy stored in the visible wavelengths of light that is otherwise lost through the thermalization of photons. This hybrid system makes use of singlet fission to split these high-energy photons into triplet excitons that are then able to be used by the photovoltaic cells. We focused on relating the morphology of two functionalized diphenylhexatriene (DPH) derivatives on cadmium selenide (CdSe) nanoparticles to the singlet fission quantum yields. We chose DPH as the chromophore which will absorb the high-energy photons because it has been shown to have a high singlet fission quantum yield. Pyridine and carboxylic acid were chosen as the functional groups to bind the DPH core on the CdSe nanoparticle because they have both have displayed efficient triplet energy transfer (TET) from nanocrystal to anthracene. The singlet fission quantum yields of these hybrid nanostructures were determined via steady state photoluminescence measurements and analyses of transient absorption kinetic data. This work shows that the packing, intermolecular interactions, and binding affinities of the singlet fission chromophore greatly affect the rate of singlet fission and energy transfer to the nanocrystal triplet acceptor.

Singlet fission in a hybrid system with CdSe nanocrystals and functionalized chromophores

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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