Engineering high-emissive silicon-doped carbon nanodots towards efficient large-area luminescent solar concentrators

Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) are devices that can collect sunlight from a large area, concentrating it at the borders of slab, to achieve efficient photovoltaic conversion when small area cells placed their edges, realizing building-integrated photovoltaics. Efficient luminophores in terms high luminescence quantum yield needed obtain high-performance LSCs. A key point is ability engineer Stokes shift (i.e. difference between maximum absorption and emission spectra), minimize reabsorption processes. In this work, we report novel silicon-doped carbon nanodots (Si-CDs) with an ultrahigh (QY) up 92.3% by simple hydrothermal method. Thin-film structured LSCs (5 × 5 0.2 cm3) different concentrations Si-CDs prepared dispersing into polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) matrix, optimal power efficiency (PCE) be as 4.36%, which nearly 2.5 times higher than silicon-undoped CDs. This Si-CDs/PVP film LSC has QY 80.5%. large-area (15 15 cm2) also successfully fabricated, possesses PCE 2.06% under natural irradiation (35 mW·cm−2), one best reported values for similar size The luminescent substances high-efficiency will further give impetus practical exploitation