Cain Department of Chemical Engineering SEMINAR

 

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Exciton: Unique Opportunities for Excitonic Photovoltaics and Solar Concentrators

 

Richard R. Lunt

Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Michigan State University, East Lansing

 

Room-temperature excitonic materials offer new opportunities for low-cost photovoltaic (PV) systems and provide prospects for unique solar harvesting science and applications. In this talk, I will introduce our pioneering work on developing transparent PV and solar concentrator materials that are creating new paradigms for building integrated solar harvesting and autonomous mobile electronics. These devices are specifically enabled by the manipulation of excitonic semiconductor materials, organic salts, and inorganic nanoclusters with selective and tuneable harvesting in the near-infrared and ultraviolet components of the solar spectrum. I will describe the development of key photophysical properties, outline the thermodynamic and practical limits to these new classes of materials and devices, and discuss their commercialization for a range of applications. 

 

Friday September 15, 2017

2:00 p.m.

1221 Patrick Taylor Hall

 

Coffee will be served at 1:30 p.m.