Proceedings of nanoGe Fall Meeting19 (NFM19)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.nfm.2019.092
Publication date: 18th July 2019
Photochemical upconversion is a strategy for converting infrared light into more energetic, visible light, with potential applications ranging from biological imaging and drug delivery to photovoltaics and photocatalysis. While systems have been developed for upconverting light from the biological tissue window near 800 nm, they remain susceptible to quenching by oxygen. Here we demonstrate an upconversion composition using semiconductor nanocrystal sensitizers that employs molecular triplet states below the singlet oxygen energy.[1] We show that, contrary to the usual expectation, the admission of oxygen enhances the intensity of upconverted light and significantly speeds up the photochemical processes involved. Further, we demonstrate photochemical upconversion from below the silicon band gap in the presence of oxygen.
These results establish a new strategy for circumventing the problem of oxygen in photochemical upconversion and lay the foundation for an expansion of this process into new applications. In particular, we report progress towards a bifacial silicon solar cell which utilizes photochemical upconversion.
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science CE170100026).