aThe inability of solar cell materials to convert all incident photon energy into electrical current, provides a fundamental limit to the solar cell efficiency; the so called Shockley-Queisser (SQ) limit. A process termed upconversion provides a pathway to convert otherwise unabsorbed low energy photons passing through the solar cell into higher energy photons, which subsequently can be redirected back to the solar cell. The combination of a semi-transparent InGaP solar cell with lanthanide upconverters, consisting of ytterbium and erbium ions doped in three different host materials (Gd 2 O 2 S, Y 2 O 3 and NaYF 4 ) is investigated.Using sub-band gap light of wavelength range 890 nm to 1045 nm with a total accumulated power density of 2.7 kW m À2 , a distinct photocurrent was measured in the solar cell when the upconverters were applied whereas a zero current was measured without upconverter. Furthermore, a time delay between excitation and emission was observed for all upconverter systems which can be explained by energy transfer upconversion. Also, a quadratic dependence on the illumination intensity was observed for the NaYF 4 and Y 2 O 3 host material upconverters. The Gd 2 O 2 S host material upconverter deviated from the quadratic illumination intensity dependence towards linear behaviour, which can be attributed to saturation effects occurring at higher illumination power densities.
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