Abstract We investigate the potential of Nd doped SrTiO3 films for the photon downshifting of ultraviolet photons to infrared ones. We first studied the structural properties of such newly developed layers grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). We also show that these layers allow the conversion of photons from 250–350 nm excitation to around 900 nm. We implemented the optimized Nd:SrTiO3 thin films on a conventional silicon solar cell and we show that the internal quantum efficiency is increased at around 350 nm which validates the concept of downshifting applied to solar cells. Future work will be to determine if downconversion takes place in this system.