University of New Mexico
Grant: $300,560 - National Science Foundation - Jun. 18, 2009
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Award Description: This award is supporting a scientific investigation to substantially lower the manufacturing cost of highly efficient solar cells. These solar cells, made from chemical elements from Group III and V of the periodic table, boast well over 40% solar-to-electric conversion efficiency, the highest amongst all solar cell devices available to date. However, their manufacturing cost is almost prohibitive for wide everyday usage on roof tops. Our technological solution promises potentially lowering the manufacturing cost by approximately 50% through fundamental materials engineering and surface chemistry that occur at very small scales. Such scalable technological solutions would make these highly efficient solar cells more widely available at substantially lower cost.
Project Description: Based on NSF support during this 1st quarter, we have produced one published journal article and one manuscript in preparation. Darin Leonhardt and Sang M. Han, ?Energetics of Ge Nucleation on SiO2 and Implications for Selective Epitaxial Growth,? Surf. Sci. 603, 2624-2629 (2009). Darin Leonhardt and Sang M. Han, ?Scale-up of Nanoscale Heterojunction Engineering to Grow Low-Threading-Dislocation-Density Ge on Si and Subsequent Integration of GaAs,? Thin Solid Films in preparation (2009).
Jobs Summary: Associate Professor coordinates the overall research effort, educating/mentoring graduate research assistants working on this project and sharing experimental/computational results with other collaborators of this project (Prof. Talid Sinno at University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Jeffrey G. Cederberg at Sandia National Laboratories, and Drs. Aaron Ptak, Manuel Romero, and Daniel Friedman at National Renewable Energy Laboratory). He also disseminates research results through journal articles, academic conference presentations, and department seminars. Staff at Center for High Technology Materials supports training of graduate students on laboratory equipment, general maintenance of multi-user growth facilities, and remote storage of experimental data. 0.927 FTE of Associate Professor (PI) and 0.45 FTE of staff at Center for High Technology Materials (Total jobs reported: 1)
Project Status: Less Than 50% Completed
This award's data was last updated on Jun. 18, 2009. Help expand these official descriptions using the wiki below.
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