Photo‐Thermo‐Refractive Glasses Doped with Silver Molecular Clusters as Luminescence Downshifting Material for Photovoltaic Applications

Abstract

Silver nanostructures, including molecular clusters and plasmonic nanoparticles, attract much attention due to their unique optical properties and potential applications in various fields. Glasses doped with silver molecular clusters are known to possess bright luminescence under UV excitation, which opens up prospects of using the glasses as solar spectral converters to overcome poor spectral response for most of photovoltaic cells in the short‐wavelength region. In this study, silver molecular clusters are formed in photo‐thermo‐refractive glass matrix both by UV irradiation and by Na+↔Ag+ ion exchange and optically characterized. Photo‐thermo‐refractive glasses doped with silver molecular clusters, independently on silver introduction method, are shown to demonstrate broad absorption in the UV, intense white emission under excitation at 360 nm, and high photoluminescence quantum yield that meet requirements for luminescence downshifting materials. Despite this, only photo‐thermo‐refractive glass with silver molecular clusters uniformly distributed in the glass volume enhances the output power of a silicon photovoltaic cell, thus showing the potential for future application of photo‐thermo‐refractive glasses in photovoltaics, particularly in case of further experiments.

Towards a Glass New World: The Role of Ion-Exchange in Modern Technology

“…In the case of photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glasses, however, the same type of reaction has been exploited by Sgybnev et al [74] to test the potential of these sodium-zincaluminosilicate glasses co-doped with Ce and Sb to serve as wavelength converters for enhancing the efficiency of PV cells. The authors tested the possibility of producing neutral silver molecular clusters in PTR glasses both by irradiating with UV radiation samples already doped with silver in bulk or by Ag + /Na + ion-exchange.…”

“…From the early works of Malta et al [54] and Hayakawa et al [55], the research literature on this topic has highlighted different reasons concerning the origin of the rare earth luminescence enhancement in optical glasses chemically treated by ionexchange, depending on the nanostructure sizes so realized: (i) an energy transfer (ET) process between the energy levels of the noble metal ions (such as isolated Ag + , Ag + -Ag + pairs or silver aggregates) and those belonging to rare earths ions; (ii) an ET mechanism among non-plasmonic small metal nanoparticles (i.e., molecule-like nanoparticles having few nanometres size) and the doping active elements; (iii) a local field enhancement around the rare earth ions due to the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) phenomenon induced in small metal nanoparticles [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66]. In the technological field, the aforementioned mechanisms-together with the down/up-conversion ones-have favoured the use of these ion-exchange glass systems in the photovoltaic sector in order to increase the solar cell efficiency through tailored cover-glasses and in the development of low cost and high performance white/coloured solid-state light sources [67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81].…”

Governing Functionality of Silver Ion-Exchanged Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glass Matrix by Small Additives

“…SMCs are characterized by photoluminescence and do not possess plasmon resonance. Stabilized in different matrices, including liquids, polymers, glasses, and zeolites, SMCs are used for developing white LEDs [49], sensors [50], spectral converters [51,52], and data storage devices [53]. Glasses doped with SMCs attract particular attention due to transparency in a wide spectral range, high thermal stability, and excellent chemical durability.…”

Molybdate-Templated Luminescent Silver Alkynyl Nanoclusters: Total Structure Determination and Optical Property Analysis

“…The co-protection of the labile phosphinate ligands created a diverse surface structure of the cluster, facilitating further functionalization of the cluster surface. The nanoclusters 1 and 2 show distinct temperature-dependent photoluminescent (PL) properties with emission wavelengths of 507 and 516 nm in the solid state at 77 K, respectively, which holds the promise to employ such clusters to the potential application in the solar cell as a sensitizer. , …”

“…The nanoclusters 1 and 2 show distinct temperature-dependent photoluminescent (PL) properties with emission wavelengths of 507 and 516 nm in the solid state at 77 K, respectively, which holds the promise to employ such clusters to the potential application in the solar cell as a sensitizer. 48,49 2. EXPERIMENTAL SECTION 2.1.…”