Chalcogen-containing materials have been used as light absorbers for photovoltaic applications, and some of them (like CIGS or CdTe) are a mature technology, with high efficiency and commercial availability. Beyond these established materials there are numerous chalcogen-based compositions at an early stage of research that show intriguing optoelectronic properties, appealing for energy generation. Despite the shared presence of chalcogen anions, these absorbers can present extremely varied characteristics, hindering the generalisation of new findings across diverse material families. However, these devices often present similar limitations (such as large V losses) which, even if originated by different causes, could be overcome by similar strategies.
This symposium will bring together researchers working on chalcogenide compounds, sharing insights on the basic material properties and resulting photovoltaic devices. Given the variety of compositions involved and their different level of development, several topics will be explored, incorporating both computational and experimental studies.
We hope that bringing the chalcogenide materials community together at this symposium will allow transfer of understanding between these different material systems, accelerating the development of solutions to tackle both the material-specific and group-characteristics issues currently limiting device performance.
- Binary chalcogenides absorbers (PbCh, Cu2Ch, Ag2Ch, Bi2Ch3, Sb2Ch3…)
- Ternary chalcogenide absorbers (CuInCh2, AgBiCh2, Cu2SnCh3…)
- Quaternary chalcogenide absorbers (Cu2ZnSnCh4…)
- Chalcogenide perovskites (BaZrS3, LaYS3…)
- Mixed compositions such as chalcohalides (BiSI, BiOI…)
My research interests are centred around materials used for renewable energy generation. My group uses ab-initio materials modelling to predict the properties of these materials and link the macroscopic observables (such as open circuit voltage or thermodynamic stability) with microscopic processes (such as electron capture or electron-phonon coupling). I am an Assistant Professor of Physics at Northumbria University (UK), a fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute and an Associate Editor at the Journal of Open Source Software.
Dr. Edgardo Saucedo studied Chemical Engineering at the University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay, and received his PhD in Materials Physic at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain in 2007 with a FPU fellowship. In 2007, he joined the Institut de Recherche et Développement sur l’Énergie Photovoltaïque IRDEP (Paris, France), with a CNRS associated Researcher fellowship, working in the development and optoelectronic characterization of CIGS low cost based solar cells. In 2009, he joined NEXCIS, a spin-off created from IRDEP, to further pursue their training in photovoltaic technology. In 2010, he joined the Solar Energy Materials and SystemsGroup at the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC) under a Juan de la Cierva Fellowship first (2010-2011) and a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship afterwards (2012-2016), with the aim to develop new low cost materials and processes for thin film photovoltaic devices. In 2020 he joined the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) to continuous his scientific and professorhip career.
He holds five patents and has authored or co-authored more than 215 papers in recognized international journals, including: Energy and Environmental Science, Advanced Materials, Adv. Energy Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Chemistry of Materials, Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, NanoEnergy, J. Mater. Chem. A, J. Phys. Chem. C, etc. He has more than 350 contributions to the most important Congresses in Physics, Chemistry and Materials, and more than 35 invited talks around the world. He has been involved in more than 25 European and Spanish Projects (Scalenano, Inducis, Pvicokest, KestPV, Larcis, etc.), and he was the Coordinator of the ITN Marie Curie network Kestcell (www.kestcells.eu), the research and innovation project STARCELL (www.starcell.eu), and the RISE project INFINITE-CELL (www.infinite-cell.eu), three of the most important initiatives in Europe for the development of Kesterites. In 2019 he was granted with an ERC-Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (SENSATE, 866018, 2020-2025), for the development of low dimensional materials for solar harvesting applications to be developed at UPC. Currently he is also the scientific coordinator of the European project SUSTOM-ART (952982), for the industrialization of kesterite for BIPV/PIPV applications.
He is frequently chairman and invited speakers in the most relevant Conferences in Photovoltaic (E-MRS, MRS, IEEE-PVSC, EUPVSEC, European Kesterite Workshop, etc.). He has supervised 11 PhD Thesis and is currently supervising 5 more. He has an h factor of 38 and more than 5000 citations. In 2020 he has been awarded with the ASEVA-Toyota Award for his contribution to the development of sustainable photovoltaic technologies using vacuum techniques (https://aseva.es/resolucion-de-los-primeros-premios-nacionales-de-ciencia-y-tecnologia-de-vacio-aseva-toyota/).