A REVIEW OF RARE-EARTH IONS DOPED UPCONVERSION PROCESS IN SOLAR CELLS

Spectral conversion for solar cells is an emerging concept and it has the potential to increase the efficiency of solar cells significantly. Among various up conversion processes, the energy transfer up conversion (ETU) is the most probable and fastest one widely used in practical applications. Rare earth ions are ideal candidates for spectral conversion, due to their high luminescence efficiencies and rich energy level structure that allows for great flexibility in the up conversion of photons in a wide spectral region (NIR-VIS-UV). This paper, reviews the potential of using rare-earth ions as up converters.