Sensitization of silicon by singlet exciton fission in tetracene

Markus Einzinger, Tony Wu, Julia F. Kompalla, Hannah L. Smith, Collin F. Perkinson, Lea Nienhaus, Sarah Wieghold, Daniel N. Congreve, Antoine Kahn, Moungi G. Bawendi and Marc A. Baldo ()
Additional contact information
Markus Einzinger: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Tony Wu: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Julia F. Kompalla: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Hannah L. Smith: Princeton University
Collin F. Perkinson: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Lea Nienhaus: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Sarah Wieghold: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Daniel N. Congreve: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Antoine Kahn: Princeton University
Moungi G. Bawendi: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Marc A. Baldo: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Nature, 2019, vol. 571, issue 7763, 90-94

Abstract: Abstract Silicon dominates contemporary solar cell technologies1. But when absorbing photons, silicon (like other semiconductors) wastes energy in excess of its bandgap2. Reducing these thermalization losses and enabling better sensitivity to light is possible by sensitizing the silicon solar cell using singlet exciton fission, in which two excited states with triplet spin character (triplet excitons) are generated from a photoexcited state of higher energy with singlet spin character (a singlet exciton)3–5. Singlet exciton fission in the molecular semiconductor tetracene is known to generate triplet excitons that are energetically matched to the silicon bandgap6–8. When the triplet excitons are transferred to silicon they create additional electron–hole pairs, promising to increase cell efficiencies from the single-junction limit of 29 per cent to as high as 35 per cent9. Here we reduce the thickness of the protective hafnium oxynitride layer at the surface of a silicon solar cell to just eight angstroms, using electric-field-effect passivation to enable the efficient energy transfer of the triplet excitons formed in the tetracene. The maximum combined yield of the fission in tetracene and the energy transfer to silicon is around 133 per cent, establishing the potential of singlet exciton fission to increase the efficiencies of silicon solar cells and reduce the cost of the energy that they generate.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1339-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:571:y:2019:i:7763:d:10.1038_s41586-019-1339-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1339-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().