Materials Engineering for High Efficiency Solar cells and Photoelectrochemical Conversion of CO2 to Value-added Chemicals (10/01/25)
Speaker and Affliation:
Dr. Sudhanshu
Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), Belgium
When?
10th January, 2025 (Friday), 10.00 AM (India Standard Time)
Where
BPCR Seminar Hall, Dept. of Materials Engineering, IISc, Bangalore
Abstract:
Solar-driven energy conversion systems are pivotal for sustainable growth. This talk focuses on the main question, i.e., How to improve solar to electrical conversion efficiency of a thin film photovoltaic device and is it possible to utilize the electrons at the surface of the semiconducting device to drive chemical reaction such as CO2 reduction by taking advantage of the bandgap tunability ? I will introduce specific chalcogenide semiconductors, which are interesting due to their bandgap tunability and potential for photovoltaics. Particularly, the case of wide bandgap Cu(In,Ga)S2 (CIGS) semiconductor will be discussed due its favorable bandgap and composition tuning, making it favorable for photovoltaics and photoelectrochemical (PEC) devices. Systematic improvements in the bulk and the interface leads to enhanced efficiency of a CIGS based PV device. The interesting surface chemistry of the CIGS makes it suitable for PEC CO2 reduction as well. A model system demonstrating PEC CO2 reduction on direct semiconductor-electrolyte interface will be presented. Additionally, a brief overview of energy research activities at Energyville facility of IMEC will be presented which includes perovskite solar cells and other activities.
Biography:
Sudhanshu Shukla is a senior researcher at Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), Belgium. He was also a Marie Skłodowska–Curie fellow at IMEC. He obtained his PhD from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2017. He was a visiting research scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of California, Berkeley, USA (2016). Before joining IMEC, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory for photovoltaics at the University of Luxembourg (2020). His research interest includes fundamental understanding and application of novel compound semiconductors for photovoltaics and photoelectrochemical solar fuels generation. He is leading/co-leading several European projects in this area.