Motivated by the opportunity to address the challenges of toxicity and instability affecting lead-halide perovskites, researchers have been turning their attention to the development of new hybrid and inorganic solar absorbers. With advances in the fields of two-dimensional perovskites, emerging metal halides, chalcogenides, and chalcohalides, a plethora of promising photovoltaic absorbers has been discovered, and their properties have been increasingly well understood. This exciting class of materials includes Ruddlesden-Popper perovskites (A2BX4), Dion-Jacobson perovskites(ABX4), double perovskites (A2BB’X6), ABZ2 semiconductors, rudorffites, heavy-pnictogen chalcohalides, and pnictides.
Our symposium aims to facilitate a comprehensive discussion among experts in the fabrication, simulation, and characterization of this emerging class of semiconducting materials. By bringing together a range of different perspectives and skill sets, we hope to promote a deeper understanding of these new solar absorbers and accelerate their development.
We invite contributions that cover a broad range of topics, including fabrication methods (such as solution processing and thermal evaporation), characterization and the development of structure-properties relations, and photophysical studies.
- Synthesis and material development of emerging hybrid and inorganic photoabsorbers
- Dry and wet thin-film processing techniques of emerging hybrid and inorganic photoabsorbers
- Structural characterization and development of structure-properties relations
- Theoretical predictions of novel inorganic and hybrid materials
- Charge-carrier dynamics and transport in novel inorganic and hybrid materials
Yi-Teng HuangYi-Teng Huang received his B.S. degree in Physics from National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in 2013. He then entered the Institute of Applied Physics at National Taiwan University (NTU), where he obtained his M.S. degree in 2015 under the supervision of Prof. Ding Ping Tsai. After completing his master's degree, he served as a physics intern teacher at a high school. Although he later obtained a teacher's certificate in physics, he chose to join AU Optronics as a LCD engineer to explore more career possibilities. During his time as an engineer, he further realized his passion for academic research. Consequently, he left industry and joined the Research Center for Applied Sciences (RCAS) at Academia Sinica as a research assistant, where he prepared for doctoral studies abroad. In 2019, he began his Ph.D. studies in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge under the joint supervision of Prof. Akshay Rao and Prof. Robert Hoye. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2023, he followed Prof. Robert Hoye to the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford to establish a new research group, where he conducted postdoctoral research until June 2025. He joined the Graduate Institute of Photonics and Optoelectronics (GIPO) as well as the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University as an Assistant Professor in August 2025.
Jovana V. Milíc has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Turku in Finland since September 2024. She obtained her Dr. Sc. degree in the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 2017. She then worked as a Scientist in the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces at EPFL and as an Assistant Professor at the Adolphe Merkle Institute of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Her research is centered around bioinspired stimuli-responsive (supra)molecular materials for energy conversion, with a particular interest in photovoltaics and neuro-morphic computing for smart and sustainable (nano)technologies. For more information, refer to her website (www.jovanamilic.com).
Loreta Angela Muscarella was born in Palermo, Italy. In 2012, she moved to Rome where she started a bachelor in chemistry at Sapienza - University of Rome. During her Master’s studies, she spent seven months at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) under the supervision of Dr. René Williams to write her thesis on the effect of metallic ions in mixed-halide perovskites to improve the stability and optoelectronic properties. She received her MSc degree in inorganic and physical chemistry cum laude (with honors). In 2018, Loreta joined the group of Prof. Dr. Bruno Ehrler at AMOLF as a PhD student. Here, she investigated the relation between structure and optoelectronic properties of 3D and layered 2D lead-halide perovskites by monitoring the optoelectronic properties of mechanically compressed perovskites. In 2022, she joined the group of Dr. Eline Hutter (Utrecht University) as a postdoc to study photochemistry processes using lead-free perovskites. In January 2024, she started as assistant professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam where her group combines spectroscopy and compositional engineering of perovskite-based materials to investigate on the external stimuli response of the emerging perovskite-based materials. In March 2026, she starts as Associate Professor at the Department of Physics and Chemistry Emilio Segrè at the Università degli Studi di Palermo where she will continue her work on lead-free and metal-free perovskites.
Pablo P. Boix, Ph.D. in Nanoscience, is a Research Scientist at Instituto de Tecnologia Química (CSIC). He led a pioneer perovskite research team at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore (2012-2016) with relevant contributions to materials and devices’ development (such as the first use of formamidinium cation in perovskite solar cells). His track record has more than 100 publications, which resulted in his selection as a Highly Cited Researcher in 2020 (Cross-Field) by Clarivate Web of Science, with an h index of 57. Dr. Boix is the co-inventor of 3 patents in the field of perovskite optoelectronics. Prior to his current position, he worked as a research group leader in a perovskite solar cell company (Dyesol Ltd, Switzerland), focusing on product R&D, and at Universitat de València. Currently, he is the PI of 2 research projects and the coPI of 3, including regional, national, and European funding.
Sankaran is an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India, He leads SRLab, which develops time- and polarization-resolved optical instruments to probe how structural chirality at nanoscale intertaces governs spin polarsation in semiconductors. He holds a PhD from NTU Singapore and has previously associated with the Division of Chemical Physics at Lund University, Sweden, as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. His research spans charge carrier dynamics and charge-lattice interactions in low-dimensional and lead-free perovskites, light-matter interactions in chiral nanomaterials and ultrafast and quantum optical spectroscopy.
Prof. Patrick Rinke received his PhD from the University of York in England in 2003. Subsequently, he was a post-doctoral scholar at the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, Germany, and in the Materials Department at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) before becoming a group leader at the FHI in 2009. In 2014, he was appointed as a professor for Computational Electronic Structure Theory in the Department of Applied Physics at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. Since 2024, he leads the AI-Based Materials Science chair at Technical University Munich in Germany. He develops advanced electronic structure, data science and machine learning methods and applies them to pertinent problems in materials science. In 2023 he received the Aalto Open Science award for creating the Aalto Materials Digitalization platform AMAD.
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/).
Javier Vela is a University Professor of Chemistry at Iowa State University. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He serves on the editorial advisory boards of ACS Energy Letters, Chemistry of Materials, Chemistry–An Asian Journal, and ChemNanoMat. Along with former and current coworkers, Dr. Vela is the author of over one hundred peer-reviewed scientific publications and patents on nanostructured materials, inorganic compounds, and their application to energy conversion, chemical catalysis, and fluorescence imaging. He has directed nineteen doctoral and four master’s theses and successfully mentored numerous undergraduate researchers, among them three NSF graduate research fellowship awardees.
Dr. Vela has been a faculty scientist with the Ames National Laboratory since 2010. An active member of the American Chemical Society, he has served as Councilor for the Ames local section, Program Chair for the Midwest Regional Meeting in Ames in 2018, Treasurer of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry, and member of the Committee on Committees (ConC). He also worked as Equity Advisor for the ISU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 2015 to 2021. Dr. Vela holds a BS (Lic.) in Chemistry from UNAM and a PhD degree in Chemistry from the University of Rochester. After postdoctoral stints at the University of Chicago and Los Alamos National Laboratory, he joined Iowa State University in 2009. He was granted tenure in 2015, rose to the rank of full professor in 2019, and was named University Professor in 2020. He also held the rotating John D. Corbett Endowed Professorship from 2020 to 2023.
Javier Vela is a University Professor of Chemistry at Iowa State University. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He serves on the editorial advisory boards of ACS Energy Letters, Chemistry of Materials, Chemistry–An Asian Journal, and ChemNanoMat. Along with former and current coworkers, Dr. Vela is the author of over one hundred peer-reviewed scientific publications and patents on nanostructured materials, inorganic compounds, and their application to energy conversion, chemical catalysis, and fluorescence imaging. He has directed nineteen doctoral and four master’s theses and successfully mentored numerous undergraduate researchers, among them three NSF graduate research fellowship awardees.
Dr. Vela has been a faculty scientist with the Ames National Laboratory since 2010. An active member of the American Chemical Society, he has served as Councilor for the Ames local section, Program Chair for the Midwest Regional Meeting in Ames in 2018, Treasurer of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry, and member of the Committee on Committees (ConC). He also worked as Equity Advisor for the ISU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 2015 to 2021. Dr. Vela holds a BS (Lic.) in Chemistry from UNAM and a PhD degree in Chemistry from the University of Rochester. After postdoctoral stints at the University of Chicago and Los Alamos National Laboratory, he joined Iowa State University in 2009. He was granted tenure in 2015, rose to the rank of full professor in 2019, and was named University Professor in 2020. He also held the rotating John D. Corbett Endowed Professorship from 2020 to 2023. Dr. Vela grew up in Xalapa (Veracruz), Mexico and became a Naturalized US Citizen in 2013.