Principal Investigator Dirk Englund
Project Website http://www.cise.columbia.edu/efrc/
The Columbia EFRC is creating technology which will redefine photovoltaic efficiency in organic and hybrid systems through fundamental understanding and molecule-scale control of the key steps in the photovoltaic process.
The EFRC focuses its expertise in chemical synthesis, fabrication, manipulation, and characterization to systematically develop understanding of the primary photovoltaic processes in organic and hybrid materials. In addition, it seeks to develop and quantitatively investigate nanostructured materials with potential for extracting multiple electrical charges from a single absorption event, thus establishing a scientific basis for moving the efficiency of these solar cell devices well beyond the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit.
The Columbia EFRC is a collaboration between University of Texas (Prof. Xiaoyang Zhu), Purdue University (Prof. Ashraful Alam), and the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
The research program of the EFRC centers around five multi-site, multi-disciplinary, and interlocking research thrusts. Each thrust represents an integrated effort incorporating theory, materials, and measurement.