New Nanostructured Materials for Efficient Photon Upconversion

Although methods for harvesting subbandgap solar photons have been demonstrated, present approaches still face substantial challenges. We evaluate carrier escape mechanisms in an InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) intermediate band photovoltaic (PV) device using photocurrent measurements under subbandgap illumination. We show that subbandgap photons can generate photocurrent through a two-photon absorption process, but that carrier trapping and retrapping limit the overall photocurrent regardless of whether the dominant carrier escape mechanism is optical, tunneling, or thermal. We introduce a new design for an InAs QD-based nanostructured material that can efficiently upconvert two low-energy photons into one high-energy photon. Efficiency is enhanced by intentionally sacrificing a small amount of photon energy to minimize radiative and nonradiative loss. Upconversion PV devices based on this approach separate the absorption of subbandgap photons from the current-harvesting junction, circumventing the carrier-trapping problems.