Fueled by the rapid advancements in the field of chalcogenide and perovskite materials, many promising semiconductors have emerged with high optical absorption and excellent optoelectronic properties. These include novel and earth abundant chalcogenides, oxides, pnictides and defect-tolerant perovskite inspired materials. Development of these material systems is desirable for their applicability in thin film solar cells and tandem solar cells. The experimental progress is closely tied to their fundamental properties and charge carrier transport. Moreover, computation and machine learning augmented material studies play a pivotal role in designing new photovoltaic materials and characterization. The symposium invites contributions involving novel PV concepts and materials development. Example material systems include but not limited to:
kesterite (Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 and derived compounds), sulfides and selenides (CuInGaS2, Sb2Se3, Sb2S3, Se), oxides (BiFeO3, BiTiO3, Cu2O, BiVO4 etc.), nitrides (ZnSnN2, Cu3N), and emerging chalcogenides (BaZrS3, Cu3BiS3, AgBiS2, NaBiS2, CuSbS2, GeS, etc.)
POSTER CONTRIBUTION PRIZE:
🏅 Best Oral Contribution prize valued at 100€. Thanks to the contributions of:
🏅 Best Poster Contribution prize valued at 50€. Thanks to the contributions of:
- PHOENIX (Horizon Europe project, Grant agreement id 101172764)
- KESPER (M-ERA.NET project)
- New insights on materials growth and properties: in-situ insights on growth and crystallization process, advance characterization, and spectroscopic investigations.
- Rational design and synthesis approaches: high-throughput experimentation, combinatorial synthesis, machine learning enabled materials discovery.
- Synthesis and optoelectronic properties of the photovoltaic absorber material.
- Theory and computational studies on electronic structure and defects
- New phenomena: photoferroelectrics, ultrathin nanocrystal absorbers.
- Device application: thin film solar cells, new device architectures for solar cells, tandem devices.
Sudhanshu Shukla is a senior researcher at Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), Belgium and formerly a Marie Skłodowska–Curie fellow at IMEC. He obtained his PhD from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2017 in the group of Prof. Qihua Xiong. He was a visiting research scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of California, Berkeley, USA (2016) in the group of Prof. Joel Ager. After his PhD, he joined Prof. Susanne Siebentritt's group at Univeristy of Luxembourg before joining IMEC. His research interest includes fundamental understanding and application of novel compound semiconductors for photovoltaics and photoelectrochemical solar fuels generation.
Guy Brammertz graduated in 1999 from the University of Liège (Belgium) in Applied Physics. In 2003 he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Twente (The Netherlands) defending a thesis about his work on superconducting Josephson junction photon detectors carried out for the European Space Agency. He then joined imec in 2004, where he first was involved in the LogicDram program aiming at the fabrication of Ge and III-V 35 nm gate length MOS transistors for CMOS applications. His work focused on electrical and optical characterization as well as passivation of electrical defects at Ge and III-V/oxide interfaces. In 2011 he joined the imec photovoltaic program, where he is now working on the fabrication and characterization of thin film solar cells based on Cu(In,Ga)(S,Se)2 (CIGS), Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 (CZTS) and Cu2ZnGe(S,Se)4 (CZGS) absorbers.
Andrea Crovetto is an associate professor at DTU Nanolab, Technical University of Denmark. He obtained his PhD degree from DTU (advisor: Ole Hansen) with an external stay at UNSW (Australia) in Xiaojing Hao's group. He was then a postdoctoral researcher at DTU Physics with Ib Chorkendorff and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at NREL (USA) with Andriy Zakutayev, and at HZB (Germany) with Thomas Unold. The focus of Andrea's research is the discovery and development of new thin-film materials from unusual nooks of the periodic table. His key application area is optoelectronics, including solar cells, electrochemical cells, and transparent conductors.
Prof. Anna Fontcuberta i Morral is a Full Professor in Materials Science and Engineering and in Physics at EPFL. Since January 2021 she is associate Vicepresident for Centers and Platforms. She is member of the EPFL-WISH foundation and former president, foundation whose goal is to support female students on accomplishing their professional dreams. She is also part of the Swiss National Quantum Commission of the Swiss Academy of Sciences. She has served as Research Councillor of Division IV of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) from 2015 to 2024. From August 2020 to April 2024 she has been the President of the Specialised Committee for International Cooperation at SNSF. From January 2025 she is going to serve as the EPFL President.
Anna studied physics at the University of Barcelona. She then moved to Paris where she obtained a PhD in Materials Science from Ecole Polytehcnique (France). She performed a postdoc at CalTech with Prof. Harry Atwater, with whom she also co-founded the start-up company Aonex Technologies. After a brief period as CNRS researcher at Ecole Polytechnique, she moved to TU Munich as a group leader. She has been professor at EPFL since 2008. Among the awards she has received are the Marie Curie Excellence Grant, ERC Starting Grant, the SNSF-backup schemes Consolidator Grant and the EPS Emy Noether prize.
Geoffroy HautierAlejandro Pérez-Rodríguez is Full Professor of Electronics at the University of Barcelona (UB). Since October 2009 he is ascribed to IREC as Head of the Solar Energy Materials and Systems (SEMS) Group. His research activities are centred in the development and advanced characterisation of cost-efficient thin film emerging inorganic technologies, using processes compatible with their industrial sustainable upscaling with very low environmental impact. Special emphasis in these activities is given to the exploitation of the technological flexibility of these technologies for advanced PV integration applications, including the development of flexible solar cells and innovative efficient transparent contacts for next generation semi-transparent devices specially suited for Building Integration and Agrivoltaics. He is co-author of 413 scientific publications, including 329 papers in SCI high IF journals, with an h-factor of 58 and 11322 citations (with a consolidated average of 802 citations/year during the last 6 years) (Scopus January 2025). He is co-author of 6 patents, including a patent that was under exploitation by the former company Smalle Technologies SL (spin-off of the UB) and 3 patents shared with NEXCIS (former spin-off of EDF in France).
Rachel Woods-Robinson