Research Highlights

Dr. Augusto presenting at EPE, March 2019

Guest talk at the Energy Research Office, Brazil

Dr. André Augusto, a Research Scientist working at Solar Power Laboratory at Arizona State University/QESST  delivered recently an invited talk to energy experts from The Energy Research Office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The discussion focus was the future of commercial photovoltaic technology and how silicon-based solar cells are grasping new markets by delivering thinner solar cells….

QESST Report Year 7

Public Report for Year 2017

If you want to know what QESST achievements for this past years are, check out the public report here.   Or if you are a member of QESST, you can access the complete report.

Exploded view of final solar shingle design

Solar Energy Harvesting Shingles at the University of Delaware

Outcome/Accomplishment: Bob Opila, QESST faculty from the University of Delaware, partnered with Faculty Advisor, Liyun Wang of the Mechanical engineering department, leading five mechanical engineering seniors (Team 109) in designing solar energy harvesting shingles. Andrew Koster, Colleen Gegeckas, Kangning Guo, Kenneth Eland and Jessica Booth chose the solar shingles over 20 other projects for their…

Antony Aguilar, QESST scholar

QESST Scholar gives an extended oral talk at IEEE PVSC

Outcome/Accomplishment QESST scholar Antony Aguilar was invited to present the extended oral talk at the 2016 IEEE Photovoltaics Specialist Conference in Portland, Oregon. Antony presented the paper, Development of Cu Plating for Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells, representing the High Efficiency Silicon Solar Cell (HESSC) team directed by QESST faculty, Stuart Bowden. Co-authors included other QESST…

UNM Pioneers Antimony Based Solar Cells

QESST researchers at the University of New Mexico are capitalizing on over two decades of experience at the UNM Center for High Tech Materials (CHTM) in antimonide based narrow gap compound semiconductor devices to advance solar technologies. The epitaxial laboratory at CHTM has four molecular beam epitaxy reactors dedicated to the technology, including a fully…

Quantum-Engineering for Pushing Tandem Solar Cells Conversion Efficiencies toward 50%

Tandem devices based on III-V semiconductors have shown excellent promise for boosting solar cell conversion efficiencies. In particular, the use of a bottom subcell made with dilute nitrogen alloys of these semiconductors in a 3-cells series-connected tandem configuration already has shown practical conversion efficiencies in the range of 44%. Nevertheless, thus far access to higher…

QESST researchers grow novel InGaN alloys

A collaboration between QESST researchers at Georgia Tech and Arizona State University has developed and demonstrated high quality InGaN thin films with high In compositions. These films show high optical properties that result from full-strain relaxation and uniform chemical composition profiles, in a range that was previously thought not possible. Thick InGaN films grown on…