Inorganic solar cells on the market today fall short of absorbing all of the energy available in sunlight. To improve the efficiency of these photovoltaic (PV) cells and overcome the Shockley–Queisser limit, we explore a potentially efficient process called Singlet Fission (SF). If singlet fission occurs quantitatively, two electron–hole pairs are generated for each photon absorbed. The rate of SF is thus extremely important and the coupling between singlet and triplet controls the rate of fission. By applying 9,10-Bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene to the surface of PbS nanoparticles of different size, we want to use its rigid structure to enable stabilized long-lived singlet and triplet states. The goal is to minimize losses due to charge or energy transfer and radiative and non-radiative decay to the ground state. In this poster, we will report on the efficiencies of SF, triplet energy transfer, and overall photon down-conversion quantum yields. By harvesting the energy in dark triplet excitons via photoluminescence of the PbS nanocrystals, this work provides a path towards improving the PV efficiency.

Singlet fission in a hybrid PbS nanocrystal/ 9,10-Bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene system

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.