Self-Healing Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Polymer Hosts for Solid-State Triplet-Triplet Annihilation Upconversion

利用上转换层可以提高太阳能电池的性能。它们将未捕获的近红外光子转换成可能被细胞有效吸收的高能量光。除太阳能外，上转换的应用还包括夜视、防伪、生物成像、光催化和传感。该项目将重点关注三重态-三重态湮灭上转换（TTA-UC），这需要光团对之间的相互作用，包括吸收低能量光子的敏化器和与第二个发射器相互作用以释放更高能量光子的发射器。因此，TTA-UC是一个扩散介导的过程，因此在固态中的效率比在溶液中的效率低。然而，为了使UC层易于应用于太阳能电池，需要固态主机。该项目的主要目标是开发基于有机-无机杂化聚合物的新一代TTA-UC主体材料。除了主要的上转换功能外，该项目还旨在将自修复特性作为附加功能纳入聚合物中。

The performance of solar cells can be improved through the use of upconverting layers. These convert uncaptured near-IR photons into higher-energy light that may be absorbed usefully by the cell. Beyond solar energy, the applications of upconversion include night-vision, anti-counterfeiting, bioimaging, photocatalysis and sensing. This project will focus on triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC), which requires the interaction between pairs of lumophores, consisting of a sensitiser, which absorbs the low energy photons, and an emitter, which interacts with a second emitter to release a higher energy photon. TTA-UC is therefore a diffusion-mediated process, and as such shows lower efficiency in the solid state than in solution. However, a solid-state host is required for UC layers to be easily applied to solar cells. The key aim for this project is to develop a new generation of TTA-UC host materials based on organic-inorganic hybrid polymers.Beyond the primary upconverting functionality, this project will also aim to incorporate self-healing properties to the polymers as an additional functionality.