PhD Project by Lena Mittmann

Project Title: Phosphosulfide Materials for Solar Cells
Group: Plasma Aided Nanotechnology 
Supervisor: Andrea Crovetto, Eugen Stamate

Project description
The aim of this project is to find the best material for the application as a top absorber of a two-junction (tandem) solar cell from the promising and versatile group of phosphosulfides. To achieve this a two-way collaboration with a computational PhD student (Javier Sanz Rodrigo) will be established. The materials will be deposited as thin-film combinatorial libraries by techniques including reactive sputtering, evaporation, chemical vapor deposition, and reactive annealing. To characterize these materials x-ray diffraction, x-ray photoemission spectroscopy, electron microscopy, spectroscopic ellipsometry, photoluminescence spectroscopy and many other techniques will be used.

Background
The present ecological and technological problems resulting from the use of rare or irresponsibly mined metals in many areas of technology give rise to the need for the development of new environmentally friendly materials with improved properties. The main challenge is the identification of these auspicious new materials from the enormous amount of already reported materials and those materials that have yet to be discovered. To predict which materials will have the desired properties, high-throughput experimental material synthesis and characterization can be combined with state-of-the-art computer modeling. This data driven method called inverse design makes the inquiry for the best possible material more efficient and sustainable as it reduces both the time and material consumption.

This project is part of the Inorganic Phosphosulfides for Optoelectronics (OPTOPUS) project funded by the Villum Young Investigator grant.