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Ultrafast narrowband exciton routing within layered perovskite nanoplatelets enables low-loss luminescent solar concentrators

Nature Energy volume 4, pages 197–205 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

In luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) systems, broadband solar energy is absorbed, down-converted and waveguided to the panel edges where peripheral photovoltaic cells convert the concentrated light to electricity. Achieving a low-loss LSC requires reducing the reabsorption of emitted light within the absorbing medium while maintaining high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY). Here we employ layered hybrid metal halide perovskites—ensembles of two-dimensional perovskite domains—to fabricate low-loss large-area LSCs that fulfil this requirement. We devised a facile synthetic route to obtain layered perovskite nanoplatelets (PNPLs) that possess a tunable number of layers within each platelet. Efficient ultrafast non-radiative exciton routing within each PNPL (0.1 ps−1) produces a large Stokes shift and a high PLQY simultaneously. Using this approach, we achieve an optical quantum efficiency of 26% and an internal concentration factor of 3.3 for LSCs with an area of 10 × 10 cm2, which represents a fourfold enhancement over the best previously reported perovskite LSCs.

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Fig. 1: Design principles of efficient LSCs based on ultrafast narrowband exciton routing.
Fig. 2: Synthesis and material properties of single-phase layered PNPLs.
Fig. 3: Ultrafast energy transfer in multiphase layered PNPLs.
Fig. 4: Modification of donor/acceptor ratios to reduce reabsorption loss.
Fig. 5: Ultrafast exciton routers enable low-loss large-area perovskite LSCs.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This publication is based in part on work supported by the US Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research (Grant Award No. N00014-17-1-2524), the Ontario Research Fund Research Excellence Program, and by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. L.N.Q. acknowledges the financial support by National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (2014R1A2A1A09005656; 2015M1A2A2058365). F.P.G.d.A. acknowledges financial support from the Connaught fund. A.G.-P. is supported by NSF GRFP (DGE-1147470). Use of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Mingyang Wei, F. Pelayo García de Arquer, Grant Walters

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Mingyang Wei, F. Pelayo García de Arquer, Grant Walters, Zhenyu Yang, Li Na Quan, Younghoon Kim, Randy Sabatini, Rafael Quintero-Bermudez, Liang Gao, James Z. Fan, Fengjia Fan & Edward H. Sargent

  2. Convergence Research Center for Solar Energy, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, Daegu, Republic of Korea

    Younghoon Kim

  3. Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Aryeh Gold-Parker & Michael F. Toney

  4. Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Aryeh Gold-Parker

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Contributions

M.W., F.P.G.d.A and G.W. contributed equally to this work. M.W., F.P.G.d.A, Z.Y. and E.H.S. conceived the idea and proposed the experimental and modelling design. F.P.G.d.A performed the simulation and directed the experiments. M.W., L.N.Q. and Y.K. synthesized the materials and fabricated the devices. M.W. and G.W. performed the measurements. M.W. and R.S. conducted the transient absorption measurements. M.W., L.G. and G.W. performed stability test. G.W., F.F. and M.W. carried out AFM and TEM measurements. R.Q.-B, A.G.-P. and M.F.T. were responsible for the GIWAXS measurements. M.W., F.P.G.d.A., G.W. and E.H.S. co-wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed in data analysis, read and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Edward H. Sargent.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figure 1–15, Supplementary Table 1–4, Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Note 1, Supplementary References

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Wei, M., de Arquer, F.P.G., Walters, G. et al. Ultrafast narrowband exciton routing within layered perovskite nanoplatelets enables low-loss luminescent solar concentrators. Nat Energy 4, 197–205 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0313-y

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