Luminescent Solar Concentrators Based on Energy Transfer from an Aggregation-Induced Emitter Conjugated Polymer.

Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) are solar-harvesting devices fabricated from a transparent waveguide that is doped or coated with lumophores. Despite their potential for architectural integration, the optical efficiency of LSCs is often limited by incomplete harvesting of solar radiation and aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) of lumophores in the solid state. Here, we demonstrate a multilumophore LSC design that circumvents these challenges through a combination of nonradiative Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) and aggregation-induced emission (AIE). The LSC incorporates a green-emitting poly(tetraphenylethylene), p-O-TPE, as an energy donor and a red-emitting perylene bisimide molecular dye (PDI-Sil) as the energy acceptor, within an organic-inorganic hybrid diureasil waveguide. Steady-state photoluminescence studies demonstrate the diureasil host induced AIE from the p-O-PTE donor polymer, leading to a high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of ∼45% and a large Stokes shift of ∼150 nm. Covalent grafting of the PDI-Sil acceptor to the siliceous domains of the diureasil waveguide also inhibits nonradiative losses by preventing molecular aggregation. Due to the excellent spectral overlap, FRET was shown to occur from p-O-TPE to PDI-Sil, which increased with acceptor concentration. As a result, the final LSC (4.5 cm × 4.5 cm × 0.3 cm) with an optimized donor-acceptor ratio (1:1 by wt %) exhibited an internal photon efficiency of 20%, demonstrating a viable design for LSCs utilizing an AIE-based FRET approach to improve the solar-harvesting performance.

Very High Solid State Photoluminescence Quantum Yields of Poly(tetraphenylethylene) Derivatives.

Five different poly(arylene-diarylvinylene)s have been synthesized by reductive polyolefination starting from the corresponding bis(α,α-dichlorobenzyl)-substituted monomers and dicobaltoctacarbonyl as reducing agent. The resulting polymers all contain main chain tetraphenylethylene units. Thanks to the aggregation-induced emission effect, the corresponding polymer films show remarkably high photoluminescence quantum yields (PLQYs) of 32%-73%. The polymer with the highest PLQY is tested as solid state sensing material for the PL-quenching-based detection of nitroaromatic analytes (1,3,5-trinitrobenzene as prototypical analyte).