Kaust post:
In order to achieve the Solar Photovoltaic Engineering Research Center’s vision and goal of developing highly-efficient solar cells at low cost, we will implement a multidisciplinary approach that integrates many scientists and engineers with complementary skills, and strongly shared interest to work in a team setting to solve these challenging but highly-rewarding tasks. The Center will start with a heavy focus on solar energy and expand in the future years to encompass areas such as energy storage, wind energy, and geothermal energy. In realizing our vision, the research team will consist of the following working groups:
Materials Chemistry and Engineering: In this working group, chemists and materials scientists will collaborate on developing the needed materials with the required optical and electrical properties to allow successful fabrication of efficient devices. In rationally designing the materials, the team will rely on integrating both the synthetic routes along with quantum simulations and modeling to fine tune and optimize the materials properties. Closed feedback of information between this group and the device physicists and engineers will allow for best optimization to be reached in minimum time frames. Several classes of materials will be targeted, including nanoparticles, quantum dots, molecular and polymeric materials, and hybrids. The materials will further be modified to yield themselves to low-cost processing techniques such as printing. The team will also be working closely with the Device Physics and Processing working group to develop novel transparent conductors and the necessary materials approaches needed for reliable encapsulation of solar cells.
