Photovoltaic cells are able to convert sunlight into electricity, providing enough of the most abundant and cleanest energy to cover our energy needs. However, the efficiency of current photovoltaics is significantly impeded by the transmission loss of sub-band-gap photons. Photon upconversion is a promising route to circumvent this problem by converting these transmitted sub-band-gap photons into above-band-gap light, where solar cells typically have high quantum efficiency. Here, we summarize recent progress on varying types of efficient upconversion materials as well as their outstanding uses in a series of solar cells, including silicon solar cells (crystalline and amorphous), gallium arsenide (GaAs) solar cells, dye-sensitized solar cells, and other types of solar cells. The challenge and prospect of upconversion materials for photovoltaic applications are also discussed.

Cross-relaxation among neighboring emitters normally causes self-quenching and limits the brightness of luminescence. However, in nanomaterials, cross-relaxation could be well-controlled and employed for increasing the luminescence efficiency at specific wavelengths. Here we report that cross-relaxation can modulate both the brightness of single upconversion nanoparticles and the threshold to reach population inversion, and both are critical factors in producing the ultra-low threshold lasing emissions in a micro cavity laser. By homogenously coating a 5-μm cavity with a single layer of nanoparticles, we demonstrate that doping Tm3+ ions at 2% can facilitate the electron accumulation at the intermediate state of 3H4 level and efficiently decrease the lasing threshold by more than one order of magnitude. As a result, we demonstrate up-converted lasing emissions with an ultralow threshold of continuous-wave excitation of ~150 W/cm2 achieved at room temperature. A single nanoparticle can lase with a full width at half-maximum as narrow as ~0.45 nm.

The inability to utilize near infrared (NIR) light has posed a stringent limitation for the efficiencies of most single-junction photovoltaic cells such as dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Here, we describe a strategy to alleviate the NIR light harvesting problem by upconverting non-responsive NIR light in a broad spectral range (over 190 nm, 670-860 nm) to narrow solar-cell-responsive visible emissions through incorporated dye-sensitized upconversion nanoparticles (DSUCNPs). Unlike typically reported UCNPs with narrow and low NIR absorption, the organic dyes (IR783) anchored on the DSUCNP surface were able to harvest NIR photons broadly and efficiently, and then transfer the harvested energy to the inorganic UCNPs (typically reported), entailing an efficient visible upconversion. We show that the incorporation of DSUCNPs into the TiO photoanode of a DSSC is able to elevate its efficiency from 7.573% to 8.568%, enhancing the power conversion efficiency by about 13.1%. We quantified that among the relative efficiency increase, 7.1% arose from the contribution of broad-band upconversion in DSUCNPs (about ∼3.4 times higher than the highest previously reported value of ∼2.1%), and 6.0% mainly from the scattering effect of DSUCNPs. Our strategy has immediate implications for the use of DSUCNPs to improve the performance of other types of photovoltaic devices.

Various energy trapping centers are employed to simultaneously suppress concentration quenching and tune luminescence output through efficiently confining the excitation energy in Er3+-sensitized upconversion nanoparticles.

Noncontact optical thermometers based on the luminescence intensity ratio of two thermally coupled energy levels, exhibiting high sensitivity, excellent accuracy, fast response, and low environment dependence, have attracted great interests in scientific research, life activities, and industrial manufacturing processes. However, the use of optical thermometers in extreme atmospheres (below 150 K) is usually limited by the required large temperature activation because of the relatively big energy difference (200 cm–1 ≤ ΔE ≤ 2000 cm–1). Here, we propose a strategy to alleviate the ultralow temperature-sensing problem by exploiting and utilizing the near-infrared (NIR) thermally coupled Stark sublevels of Tm3+ (3H4|0 → 3H6/3H4|1 → 3H6, ΔE ≈ 300 cm–1) that is much sensitive to minimal temperature variation, especially at ultralow temperatures because of the tiny energy difference. The integration of ultralow temperature-sensitive Tm3+ ions and room-temperature-sensitive Er3+ ions in an ultrasmall α-NaYbF4:Tm3+@CaF2@NaYF4:Yb3+/Er3+@CaF2 core/multishell nanoparticle (∼15 nm) as a dual-mode upconversion luminescent nanoprobe enables the broad-range temperature detection from 10 to 295 K. This structure induces ∼14 times NIR emission and ∼sixfold green upconversion luminescence output in comparison with the α-NaYbF4:Tm3+ core and α-NaYbF4:Tm3+@CaF2@NaYF4:Yb3+/Er3+ core/shell/shell nanoparticles. The maximum absolute and relative sensitivities of this dual-mode temperature sensor reach 0.67% and 3.06% K–1, respectively, showing the advantage of the concurrent utilization of the Tm3+ NIR 801/820 nm band ratio and the typical Er3+ visible 521/538 nm band ratio for a wide-range temperature-sensing purpose. This work provides a promising strategy to develop accurate and effective, contactless broad-range/ultralow temperature sensors.

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We introduce a simple method to tune the resulting size as well as the upconversion luminescence of NaYF4:Yb3+/Pr3+ nanoparticles through varying the sensitizer ytterbium concentration.

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