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

太阳能电池的性能可以通过使用上转换层来改善。这些将未捕获的近红外光子转换为更高能量的光，可以被细胞有效地吸收。除了太阳能，上转换的应用还包括夜视、防伪、生物成像、生物识别和传感。该项目将专注于三重态-三重态湮灭上转换（TTA-UC），这需要发光体对之间的相互作用，发光体由吸收低能光子的敏化剂和与第二个发射体相互作用以释放更高能量光子的发射体组成。因此，TTA-UC是一种扩散介导的过程，因此在固态下的效率低于在溶液中的效率。然而，需要固态主体以使UC层容易地应用于太阳能电池。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聚合物的附加功能。

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.