Organic upconverters embedded in a Bragg structure

For high band gap solar cells, organic molecule based upconverter materials are promising to reduce transmission losses of photons with energies below the absorption threshold. We investigate the approach of embedding the organic upconverter DPA:PtOEP directly into each second layer of a Bragg stack to achieve an enhancement of upconversion performance. The two major effects that influence the upconversion process within the Bragg stack are simulated based on experimentally determined input parameters. The locally increased irradiance is simulated using the scattering matrix method. The variation of the density of photon states is obtained from calculations of the eigenmodes of the photonic crystal using the plane wave expansion method. A relative irradiance enhancement of 3.23 has been found for a Bragg stack of 31 layers including l/8-layers on both sides. For suppressing the loss mechanism of direct sensitizer triplet decay via variations of the density of photon states, a different design of the Bragg stack is necessary than for maximum irradiance enhancement. In order to find the optimum design to increase upconversion quantum yield, both simulation results need to be coupled in a rate-equation model. The irradiance enhancement found in our simulation is significantly higher than the one found in the simulation of a grating-waveguide structure, which achieved an increase of upconversion quantum yield by a factor of 1.8. Thus, the Bragg structure is very promising for upconversion quantum yield enhancement.