01 · ENERGY HARVESTING
Solar energy and photovoltaics
Our team is excited about the next generation of photovoltaic technologies. PV technology is now the cheapest source of energy generation and will likely contribute >50% of the global electricity supply in the coming decade (from today’s ~10%). In addition, there is a new frontier in space PV that will power new data and communications infrastructure. QUEST Lab designs new materials and devices for PVs, with a strong focus on perovskite and perovskite-silicon tandems. We are interested in how micro- and nano-structured features in emerging photovoltaics ultimately control optoelectronic properties and device performance. We are also designing new microscopy techniques to probe energy transport on its native length scale to directly visualize how charges interact with grain boundaries, defects, and interfaces. These “movies” are used to design better materials with better transport properties.
Moving energy toward useful targets
Efficient devices depend on shuttling charge and excitation to the right place. In nanostructured films, however, transport can be tortuous and local losses can be severe. We pair chemical control with spatially resolved optical measurements to connect a material’s structure to its energy flow.
Passivate recombination sites
Extremely low concentrations of defects can determine photovoltaic performance. We investigate new molecular treatment and additives that lead to improved crystal quality and defect passivation. We target metrics such as high photoluminescence quantum efficiency, long charge carrier lifetime, and low surface recombination velocities.
Map nano-structured transport
We leverage various optical microscopy techniques to let us track how carriers spread through a film over time. By comparing diffusion with recombination, we identify when grain boundaries act as energy sinks or barriers—and how those pathways change with material composition.
QUEST Lab · Princeton Engineering
School of Engineering and Applied Science
41 Olden Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
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