Chemistry Student Seminar: Alexandra Stuart

Abstract

Geometric and morphological effects on singlet fission

Singlet fission (SF) is a process that has the potential to increase the efficiency of solar cells by generating two triplet excitons from a single high-energy photon.

The process effectively splits the energy of high-energy photons in two, reducing losses from thermal relaxation and increasing the maximum theoretical efficiency of a single-junction solar cell from 33 to 45%.

While the applications of singlet fission make it a highly interesting and increasingly studied process, several questions exist about the mechanism and efficiency of SF that must be answered in order to effectively use the process in solar cells.

This project attempts to address some of these questions by studying the effects of geometry and morphology on singlet fission, both experimentally using spectroscopy and using computational techniques.