文摘
Luminescent upconversion (UC) is a promising way to harvest near-infrared (NIR) sunlight and improve the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of solar cells. However, most of efficient upconversion phosphors (UCPs) are based on 4f鈥?f transitions of rare earth (RE) ions, which have only a narrower excitation band matching with sun spectrum. To solve this significant problem, we designed and fabricated a novel kind of efficient UC nanocomposites, Yb2O3/Au, in which the upconversion luminescence (UCL) of Yb2O3 was a white broad band that originated from electron鈥揾ole recombination, and the excitation bands were expanded at least a range of 770鈥?80 nm through the energy transfer (ET) from anisotropic gold nanoparticles (GNPs) to the Yb2O3 host. To our knowledge, the direct ET from the noble metal to the lanthanide phosphors has never been evidenced. Exploring Yb2O3/Au as the upconverter of a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), NIR photovoltaic response was successfully demonstrated as proof-of-concept.