About
As a third year DPhil student in the Advanced Functional Materials and Devices Group, I study a new sustainable and lightweight type of solar panel made of carbon-based molecules and how to make them more efficient at turning light into electricity. This technology, called organic solar cells, can be produced using vacuum thermal evaporation -- the same commercially scalable technique that is already used to make the OLEDs in our televisions and phone screens.
Small-scale changes in the organic molecular layers – like how the molecules pack and orient themselves – influence how well the light gets absorbed by the molecules, and how easily charges can be extracted from the solar cell. My research aims to understand these changes better and to develop techniques for modifying them within vacuum evaporation method so these devices can generate more electricity.