PhD student receives grant for collaboration with University of Liverpool

Light trapping and field enhancement effects are known to boost-up light harvesting in optoelectronic devices such as solar cells, and several contributions have been reported in the past years. However, they are based mainly on top-down cleanroom techniques with very low throughput, which increases significantly the costs of the fabricated devices and are limited to very small area coverage. 

André Cauduro, PhD student at NanoSYD, has received a travel grant from the foundation Idella, for conducting a collaborative work with University of Liverpool, which focuses on developing a lithography-free top-down method to assemble directly Au nanoparticles on the bottom electrodes in organic solar cells. The Au nanoparticles are employed for generating light trapping/field enhancements in the devices, which aim to boost their light absorption and thus power conversion efficiencies. The developed method is compatible with large-scale production and will thus bring new insights into low cost development of flexible solar cells.