Near-IR Quantum Cutting Phosphors: A Step Towards Enhancing Solar Cell Efficiency

Abstract

The global demand for energy has been increasing since past decades. Various technologieshave been working to find a suitable alternative for the generation of sustainable energy. Photovoltaic technologies for solar energy conversion represent one of the significant routesfor the green and renewable energy production. Despite of remarkable improvement in solarcell technologies, the generation of power is still suffering with lower energy conversionefficiency, high production cost, etc. The major problem in improving the PV efficiency isspectral mismatch between the incident solar spectrum and bandgap of a semiconductormaterial used in solar cell. Luminescent materials such as rare-earth doped phosphor materialshaving the quantum efficiency higher than unity can be helpful for photovoltaic applications. Quantum cutting phosphors are the most suitable candidates for the generation of two ormore low-energy photons for the absorption of every incident high-energy photons. Thephosphors which are capable of converting UV photon to visible and near-IR (NIR) photonare studied primarily for photovoltaic applications. In this review, we will survey variousnear IR quantum cutting phosphors with respective to their synthesis method, energy transfermechanism, nature of activator, sensitizer and dopant materials incorporation and energyconversion efficiency considering their applications in photovoltaics.