Session: 17-04: Symposium Steinfeld - New solar chemical processes and cycles

Paper Number: 142313

142313 - Towards Efficient Luminescent Solar Concentrators Through Perylene Diimide-Based Luminophore Design 

Abstract: 

Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) offer a unique solution to sunlight harvesting due to their spectral conversion and concentration of both direct and diffuse irradiation without active tracking. Its potential for commercialization is currently limited by the external photon efficiency, requiring design innovations in both waveguide and luminophore materials. Among the various luminophores employed for LSCs, perylene diimide derivatives (PDIs) are a well-studied class of π-conjugated organic dyes due to their high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) in dilute state and good photostability. However, they suffer from aggregation-caused quenching and small Stokes shifts, which are claimed to exacerbate the LSC performance at high dye concentrations. We recently reported a PDI-based styrenic polymer (PDI-tetraPS) that exhibits strong aggregate emission and large Stokes shift enabled by polymerization-mediated charge transfer, which could serve as a potential luminophore candidate for LSC applications [1]. We also developed a detailed model of LSCs, allowing to identify design-related performance limitations [2]. In this work, the performance of two PDI based luminophores with distinct PLQY and Stokes shifts—Lumogen F Red305 (LFR305) and PDI-tetraPS—is compared in the context of both coated and doped planar LSCs (5 ×5 ×0.5 cm³). Combined experimental and modelling approaches are employed to determine the internal and external photon efficiencies as well as their corresponding loss mechanisms. We show that the choice of the optimal luminophore is strongly dependent on the LSC configurations, and the dye concentration proves to be a critical design factor for performance optimization, revealing important tradeoffs between light absorption and QY and escape cone losses. Overall, the doped LSCs demonstrate higher performance than the coated type. For the coated LSCs, PDI-tetraPS outperforms LFR305 by 60%, and their peak external photon efficiencies are 1.6% and 1.0%, respectively. While for the doped LSCs, an opposite trend is observed where PDI-tetraPS and LFR305 achieve their best external photon efficiencies of 2.8% and 5.5%, respectively. This is mainly due to the significant Stokes shift decrease of PDI-tetraPS at low concentrations. Future efforts on luminophore design can be directed towards improving the PLQY while still maintaining large Stokes Shifts using chemistry methods such as transforming polymers into nanosized assemblies.

References

[1] Suiying Ye, Désirée Füglistaller, Tian Tian, Anjay Manian, Sudhir Kumar, Celine Nardo, Andrew J. Christofferson, Salvy P. Russo, Chih-Jen Shih, Jean-Christophe Leroux, Yinyin Bao. Strong Aggregate Emission of Perylene Diimide in Solid State Enabled by Polymerization-Mediated Charge Transfer. ChemRxiv. Cambridge: Cambridge Open Engage; 2023. doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-lq62w.

[2] Sha Li, Sophia Haussener. Radiative Transfer in Luminescent Solar Concentrators. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer (Accepted).

Presenting Author: Sha Li École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Presenting Author Biography: Sha Li obtained her PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Australian National University (ANU) in 2020. She was the recipient of the 2020 ASME SED Graduate Student Award. She also won the Best Oral Presentation–Third Place at the 2020 ASME Energy Sustainability Conference. Currently, she is a postdoc researcher working with Prof. Sophia Haussener at EPFL, Switzerland since April 1, 2021. She is a recipient of the Spark Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation (2023).

Authors:

Sha Li École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Paul Balansard École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Suiying Ye ETH Zurich
Yinyin Bao ETH Zurich
Sophia Haussener École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)