Bright and multicolor emissive carbon dots/organosilicon composite for highly efficient tandem luminescent solar concentrators

• Published in: Carbon (New York) 2023-04, Vol.207, p.77-85
• Main Authors: Wu, Yuhan, Zhao, Liuxi, Cao, Xiyue, Zhang, Yuhong, Jiang, Xuanfeng, Sun, Zhengguang, Zhan, Yuan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Carbon dots; Luminescent solar concentrators; Organosilicon composites; Tandem; Tunable solid-state fluorescence
• ISSN: 0008-6223; 1873-3891
• DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2023.02.055

Carbon dots (CDs) hold great promise for effective alternatives to traditional luminescent materials in the field of luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) due to their low cost, eco-friendly and stability. How to improve the performance of CDs based LSCs is the research focus at present. Herein, a novel CDs/organosilicon composite (SiCDs) with tunable solid-state fluorescence and photoluminescence quantum yield from 21% to 56% is reported to cope with the limitation of aggregation-caused quenching of CDs on the performance improvement of LSCs. The emission redshift mechanism of SiCDs have been explored in detail. Furthermore, the UV absorption of SiCDs is in wide range and gradual increase in intensity as the emission red shifted from blue to orange. The SiCDs are further designed to construct a series of transparent single-layer and tandem LSCs with polydimethylsiloxane as waveguide material, and the tandem LSC based on blue and yellow emission SiCDs achieve a finally external optical efficiency of 7.10%. Carbon dot/organosilicon (SiCDs) composites with solid-state fluorescence from blue to orange were synthesized by simple solvothermal method. The emission and structure of SiCDs can be controlled just by varying the molar ratio of the ingredient. The SiCDs composites show good compatibility with the self-made polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), and their loaded content can reach 15 wt% accompanied with negligible variation of emission wavelength and photoluminescence quantum yields. The SiCDs and PDMS are further applied to construct a series of transparent single-layer and tandem LSCs, in which the tandem LSCs based on blue and yellow emission SiCDs have a finally external optical efficiency of 7.10%. [Display omitted]