PRINCETON - School of Engineering and Applied Science
About QUEST Lab
The QUEST lab at Princeton University is exploring new ways to design light-matter interactions in semiconductor and quantum materials with specific applications in solar energy, light emission, and quantum technology. We get excited about fabricating new semiconductor and quantum materials at the nanoscale and understanding how photons, electrons, and spins interact and transport in these materials. We think deeply about fundamental semiconductor and quantum physics and also design and build new technologies based on our insights.
Some questions that drive our research:
What are new semiconductor and quantum devices that we can build to better understand material physics or demonstrate new technological functionalities?
How do defects, interfaces, material structure and composition impact electronic and spin behavior in semiconductor materials?
What new microscopic tools can we build to visualize the flow of energy right after excitation? What methods can we develop to controllably move this energy toward functional targets?
How do the spin properties of electronic excitations impact energy relaxation mechanisms and how do we control energy transfer rates?
Meet the Team
We’re a highly interdisciplinary group that likes to play with electrons, photons, and spins and build new devices like solar cells, light emitters, and quantum sensors. Our interests and expertise span materials chemistry, semiconductor physics, pulsed lasers, optical microscopy, all the way to quantum optics.
Recent Work
News
All News
October 2026
Our new method to passivate defects in perovskite semiconductors is published in Science
A Princeton-led collaboration reports in Science that a new chemical mixture can mitigate crystal defects in perovskites, helping solar-cell materials retain energy from sunlight up to 10 times longer.
September 2026
QUEST Lab welcomes undergraduate thesis students
Welcome Ayanna Goonesekere, Gloria Liu, and Alex Gaines to QUEST Lab for their senior thesis research!
Publications
All Publications
2026
Yoo, J. J.; Dolan, C. J.; Nam, S.; Lee, J.; Kang, K. M.; Kang, B. J.; Desai, R.; Mohan Kumar, N.; Chakrabarti, A.; Kim, D.; Cho, J. H.; Chung, D.; Palmer, J. R.; Vences, K. X.; Deng, Z. J. D.; Luo, Y.; Lai, B.; Zhou, T.; Cai, Z.; Holt, M. V.; Kiss, A. M.; Cho, I. S.; Kim, D. H.; Noh, J. H.; Bertoni, M. I.; Mannodi-Kanakkithodi, A.; deQuilettes, D. W.; Fenning, D. P.; Shin, S. S. Science, 2026, 394 (6820), 228–233. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aeb4554
2026
deQuilettes, D. W.; Price, E. C.; Vattam, S.; Braje, D.; Mallek, J. L.; et al. US Patent App. 19/157,859.
2025
Louks, A. E.; Motes, B. T.; Troupe, A. T.; Palmstrom, A. F.; Hasham, M.; Han, Z.; et al. ACS Energy Letters, 2025, 10 (12), 6014–6021.
OPPORTUNITIES AT QUEST
Want to Join QUEST Lab?
We welcome researchers and students interested in semiconductor materials, spectroscopy, energy conversion, and quantum technologies.
QUEST Lab · Princeton Engineering
School of Engineering and Applied Science
41 Olden Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
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