february, 2019

21feb12:00 pm1:00 pmISTC Sustainability Seminar SeriesMaterials, Assembly Approaches, and Designs for Ultrahigh-Efficiency, Full-Spectrum Operation Photovoltaics and their Applications

Event Details

Abstract: The production of integrated electronic circuits provides examples of the most advanced fabrication and assembly approaches that are generally characterized by large-scale integration of high-performance compact semiconductor elements that rely on rigid and essentially planar form factors. New methods of fabricating micro-scale semiconductor devices provide a set of enabling means to lift these constraints by engendering approaches to device configurations that would be impossible to realize with bulk, wafer-scale materials while retaining capacities for high (or altogether new forms of) electronic and/or optoelectronic performance.  An exemplary case of interest in our work includes large-area integrated electro-optical systems for photovoltaic energy conversion that can provide a potentially transformational approach to supplant current technologies with high performance, low cost alternatives.  In this talk I will highlight progress made in the collaborative research efforts that illustrate important opportunities for exploiting advances in optical and electronic materials in synergy with physical means of patterning, fabrication, and assembly to advance capabilities for photovoltaic energy conversion and highlight emerging applications for new materials and unconventional device form factors in high efficiency energy conversion technologies.  Of particular interest are the materials, and new understandings of science, that will allow an efficient utilization of the full solar resource.

 

Biography: Ralph G. Nuzzo(co)author of more than 340 peer-reviewed papers and 40 awarded U.S. Letters of Patent, is the G. L. Clark Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a faculty he joined in 1991 and where he also holds an appointment as a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.  In 2014 he was appointed as an affiliated member of the Chemistry Faculty at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Sweden.  He also is a Faculty Associate in Applied Physics and Materials Science at The California Institute of Technology, where he serves as the Director of the Department of Energy Light-Materials Interactions in Energy Conversion Energy Frontier Research Center.  Professor Nuzzo received an AB degree with High Honors and Highest Distinction in Chemistry from Rutgers College in 1976 and earned a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. He accepted the position of Member of Technical Staff in Materials Research at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ in 1980, where he was named a Distinguished Member of the Staff in Research in 1987.  He joined the Illinois faculty in 1991. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Vacuum Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry (which he further serves as a Collections Editor for Nanomaterials Chemistry).  His awards include the Forschungspreis of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, co-recipient of the George E. Smith Award of the IEEE, co-recipient of the Wall Street Journal Innovators Award for Semiconductors, and the Adamson Award of the American Chemical Society. Professor Nuzzo served for 20 years as the Senior Editor of the ACS journal Langmuir.

Time

(Thursday) 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Location

Conference Room

Organizer

Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC)

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