Essential equipment for temporal characterization of transients in solar photon upconversion systems

找到有效地将太阳能转化为电能的方法对社会未来的福祉至关重要。光伏太阳能电池确实可以进行这种能量转换，但目前基于无机半导体材料的太阳能电池过于昂贵，无法广泛使用，而且通常含有对环境敏感的元素。另一方面，目前的有机染料敏化太阳能电池制造成本较低，对环境没有重大危害，但效率相对较低，工作寿命较短。申请人希望利用他们在非相干光子上转换领域的最新发现来提高有机光伏太阳能电池的效率和寿命。效率将通过在太阳光谱的近红外部分采用光子上转换来提高——这一过程将两个光子的大部分能量集中起来，以实现高能电子转移过程。使用比目前使用的有机染料更具光稳定性的富勒烯等材料，可以延长染料的使用寿命。申请者已经发现了非相干光子上转换的真正机制，现在希望利用这一信息来设计、制造和测试基于这一过程的有机太阳能光伏电池。所要求的设备将使他们能够使用瞬态吸收和延迟荧光技术跟踪光子上转换过程中关键中间物种的生产和消耗速度。如果要（由申请人）实现上述改进，这些信息是必不可少的。

Finding ways to effect the efficient conversion of solar to electrical energy is crucial to society's future well-being. Photovoltaic solar cells do make this energy conversion, but the present ones based on inorganic semiconductor materials are too expensive for widespread use and often contain environmentally sensitive elements. On the other hand the present organic dye-sensitized solar cells are cheaper to make and present no significant environmental hazard, but are relatively inefficient and have a short working lifespan. The applicants wish to make use of their recent discoveries in the area of non-coherent photon upconversion to improve both the efficiency and longevity of organic photovoltaic solar cells. Efficiency will be improved by employing photon upconversion in the near infrared portion of the solar spectrum - a process that pools most of the energy of two photons to effect a high-energy electron transfer process. Longevity will be improved by using materials such as fullerenes that are much more photostable than the organic dyes presently employed. The applicants have discovered the true mechanism of non-coherent photon upconversion and now wish to make use of this information to design, construct and test organic solar photovoltaic cells based on this process. The equipment requested will enable them to follow the rates of production and consumption of key intermediate species in the photon upconversion process using transient absorption and delayed fluorescence techniques. This information is essential if the above improvements are to be achieved (by the applicants).