Organic Emitters for Solar Collection and Concentration Devices

Research on the efficient exploitation of renewable energy sources, such as sunlight, is a topic of exceptional scientific, social and economic relevance. In this context, the development of new organic compounds plays a pivotal role, as they have found application as functional materials in a wide range of solar conversion technologies. Over the years, our group engaged in the design and synthesis of many such compounds for use in different catalytic, electrochemical and optical devices for solar energy conversion, including: light harvesters for dye-sensitized solar cells and photocatalytic H2 production, hole-transporting materials for perovskite solar cells and fluorescent emitters for sunlight collection devices. Concerning the latter application, we especially focused on the synthesis of organic fluorophores for luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs, Figure 1), a class of optical devices able to harvest, downshift and concentrate sunlight on a small surface area. Thanks to their high concentration gains, LSCs have been used for various purposes, including lighting, driving of chemical reactions and optical communication. Furthermore, in view of their low weight, tunable color and transparency, their coupling with Si-based solar cells has been proposed as a promising solution to foster the diffusion of PV technologies in the built environment. In this communication, we will describe the design of different classes of efficient organic LSC emitters, their preparation by sustainable synthetic procedures (such as those employing direct arylation reactions and environmentally benign solvents), their full spectroscopic characterization and the performances of the corresponding light-concentrating devices.