EIRES | Solliance lecture

TU/e - Eindhoven Institute for Renewable Energy Systems (EIRES) kindly invites you to join this lecture on Innovative Photovoltaics.

• Tuesday 18 April 2023
• 12h30 - 13h30
• Disruptor building (TU/e campus)

This lecture is organized by Angèle Reinders in the framework of Solliance.

Speaker
Prof. Bram Hoex, professor School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering (SPREE) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney

Topic
Atomic layer deposited films for higher-efficiency solar cells

Intro
Industrial silicon solar cell and various solar cell architectures that are still in the laboratory stage increasingly rely on innovative thin films to get closer to their ultimate performance potential. In this contribution, I will present some of our recent work where we have achieved significant improvement in the performance in a wide range of solar cells from silicon to organic solar cells enabled by atomic-scale engineering of interfaces. This work is informed by computational material science using density functional theory where the most promising materials are then synthesized using atomic layer deposition as this method allows for very rapid material development enabled by a set of in situ diagnostic tools such as spectroscopic ellipsometry and optical emission spectroscopy. The optimized layers are subsequently integrated into proof-of-principle solar cell devices to ascertain their performance at the solar cell device level.

About the speaker
Professor Bram Hoex completed both a MSc and PhD degree from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands 2003 and 2008, respectively. From 2008 to 2015 he worked at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) as a Group Leader and from 2012 also as Director of the Silicon Materials and Cells Cluster. In 2015 he joined the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering (SPREE) at UNSW Sydney where he currently serves as Deputy Head of School (Research).  His research focusses on the development and application of nanoscale thin films in a wide range of renewable energy devices. His research work and leadership in the field have been recognized by the 2008 SolarWorld Junior Einstein and the 2016 IEEE PVSC Young Professional awards. He was listed in the “Solar 40 under 40 list” globally Renewable Energy World in 2018.