Corsini Francesca, Apostolo Marco, Botta Chiara, Turri Stefano, Griffini Gianmarco
Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering "Giulio Natta", Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32 20133 Milano Italy
Solvay Specialty Polymers Viale Lombardia, 20 20021 Bollate Italy.
RSC Adv. 2021 Sep 6;11(47):29786-29796. doi: 10.1039/d1ra04537g. eCollection 2021 Sep 1.
Novel host matrices based on fluoropolymers blended with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) are presented in this work for application in efficient and photochemically stable thin-film luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs). These systems consist of blends of PMMA with three different partially fluorinated polymers in different proportions: polyvinylidenefluoride homopolymer, a copolymer of vinylidenefluoride and chloro-trifluoro-ethylene, and a terpolymer of vinylidenefluoride, hexafluoropropylene and hydroxyl-ethyl acetate. A detailed chemical, physical and structural characterization of the obtained materials allowed us to shed light on the structure-property relationships underlying the response of such blends as a LSC component, revealing the effect of the degree of crystallinity of the polymers on their functional characteristics. An optimization study of the optical and photovoltaic (PV) performance of these fluoropolymer-based LSC systems was carried out by investigating the effect of blend chemical composition, luminophore concentration and film thickness on LSC device output. LSCs featuring copolymer/PMMA blends as the host matrix were found to outperform their homopolymer- and terpolymer-based blend counterparts, attaining efficiencies comparable to those of reference PMMA-based LSC/PV assemblies. All optimized LSC systems were subjected to weathering tests for over 1000 h of continuous light exposure to evaluate the effect of the host matrix system on LSC performance decline and to correlate chemical composition with photochemical durability. It was found that all fluoropolymer/PMMA-based LSCs outperformed reference PMMA-based LSCs in terms of long-term operational lifetime. This work provides the first demonstration of thermoplastic fluoropolymer/PMMA blends for application as host matrices in efficient and stable LSCs and widens the scope of high-performance thermoplastic materials for the PV field.
本文介绍了一种基于含氟聚合物与聚甲基丙烯酸甲酯（PMMA）共混的新型主体基质，用于高效且光化学稳定的薄膜发光太阳能聚光器（LSC）。这些体系由PMMA与三种不同比例的部分含氟聚合物共混而成：聚偏氟乙烯均聚物、偏氟乙烯与氯三氟乙烯的共聚物，以及偏氟乙烯、六氟丙烯和羟基乙酸乙酯的三元共聚物。对所得材料进行详细的化学、物理和结构表征，使我们能够阐明此类共混物作为LSC组件的响应背后的结构-性能关系，揭示聚合物结晶度对其功能特性的影响。通过研究共混物化学成分、发光体浓度和薄膜厚度对LSC器件输出的影响，对这些基于含氟聚合物的LSC体系的光学和光伏（PV）性能进行了优化研究。结果发现，以共聚物/PMMA共混物作为主体基质的LSC性能优于基于均聚物和三元共聚物的共混物，其效率与基于PMMA的参考LSC/PV组件相当。所有优化后的LSC体系都进行了超过1000小时连续光照的耐候性测试，以评估主体基质体系对LSC性能下降的影响，并将化学成分与光化学耐久性相关联。结果发现，所有基于含氟聚合物/PMMA的LSC在长期运行寿命方面均优于基于PMMA的参考LSC。这项工作首次展示了热塑性含氟聚合物/PMMA共混物作为主体基质在高效稳定LSC中的应用，并拓宽了光伏领域高性能热塑性材料的范围。
