Eli Yablonovitch is an American physicist and engineer who, along with Sajeev John, founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987. He and his team were the first to create a 3-dimensional structure that exhibited a full photonic bandgap, which has been named Yablonovite. In addition to pioneering photonic crystals, he was the first to recognize that a strained quantum-well laser has a significantly reduced threshold current compared to its unstrained counterpart. This is now employed in the majority of semiconductor lasers fabricated throughout the world. His seminal paper reporting inhibited spontaneous emission in photonic crystals is among the most highly cited papers in physics and engineering.
In the 19th century, it was observed that the sunlight striking certain materials generates detectable electric current – the photoelectric effect. This discovery laid the foundation for solar cells. Solar cells have gone on to be used in many applications. They have historically been used in situations where electrical power from the grid was unavailable.
A solar cell or photovoltaic cell is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by means of the photovoltaic effect. It is a form of photoelectric cell, a device whose electrical characteristics vary when it is exposed to light. Individual solar cell devices are often the electrical building blocks of photovoltaic modules, known colloquially as "solar panels". The common single-junction silicon solar cell can produce a maximum open-circuit voltage of approximately 0.5 to 0.6 volts.
Allen M. Barnett was a research professor of electrical engineering at the University of Delaware. He was the principal investigator of the DARPA-funded Consortium for Very High Efficiency Solar cells. Barnett was the founder and CEO of solar-cell producer Astropower, Inc. He was also a Professor of Advanced Photovoltaics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering (SPREE) in Sydney Australia.
Andrew Blakers is a Professor of renewable energy engineering at the Australian National University. He has contributed to several innovations in solar photovoltaic technology, including PERC solar cells. Blakers has secured many research grants and won several awards.
Third-generation photovoltaic cells are solar cells that are potentially able to overcome the Shockley–Queisser limit of 31–41% power efficiency for single bandgap solar cells. This includes a range of alternatives to cells made of semiconducting p-n junctions and thin film cells. Common third-generation systems include multi-layer ("tandem") cells made of amorphous silicon or gallium arsenide, while more theoretical developments include frequency conversion,, hot-carrier effects and other multiple-carrier ejection techniques.
The Faculty of Engineering is a constituent body of the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. UNSW was formed on 1 July 1949, and the Faculty was established on 8 May 1950 with the inaugural meeting of the Faculty taking place on 7 June 1950. It was one of the first three University faculties which were established by Council, and was initially formed of four departments including Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Mining Engineering, headed by Dean Professor Harold Brown.
Stuart Wenham was, at the time of his death, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Advanced Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics and Director of Academic Studies of the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at the University of New South Wales.
Thin-film solar cells are made by depositing one or more thin layers of photovoltaic material onto a substrate, such as glass, plastic or metal. Thin-film solar cells are typically a few nanometers (nm) to a few microns (µm) thick–much thinner than the wafers used in conventional crystalline silicon (c-Si) based solar cells, which can be up to 200 µm thick. Thin-film solar cells are commercially used in several technologies, including cadmium telluride (CdTe), copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), and amorphous thin-film silicon.
Crystalline silicon or (c-Si) Is the crystalline forms of silicon, either polycrystalline silicon, or monocrystalline silicon. Crystalline silicon is the dominant semiconducting material used in photovoltaic technology for the production of solar cells. These cells are assembled into solar panels as part of a photovoltaic system to generate solar power from sunlight.
There are currently many research groups active in the field of photovoltaics in universities and research institutions around the world. This research can be categorized into three areas: making current technology solar cells cheaper and/or more efficient to effectively compete with other energy sources; developing new technologies based on new solar cell architectural designs; and developing new materials to serve as more efficient energy converters from light energy into electric current or light absorbers and charge carriers.
Larry C. Olsen was a pioneer in the commercialization of betavoltaic technology. While working for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation in the 1970s, Olsen lead the development of the first commercially available betavoltaic nuclear battery. Several hundred of these batteries were fabricated and a large number were used to power implanted heart pacemakers. Olsen has published more than 80 articles in the fields of betavoltaics, photovoltaics, thermoelectric materials, and solid state physics. He has also earned several awards for his research, including the R&D 100 Award, presented each year by R&D Magazine to identify the 100 most significant, newly introduced research and development advances in multiple disciplines.
Antonio Luque López is a Spanish scientist and entrepreneur in the field of photovoltaic solar energy. In 1979 he founded the Institute of Solar Energy of the Technical University of Madrid (IES-UPM) and was its director till his retirement in 2017; he is currently its honorary president as well as professor emeritus in this university. He invented the bifacial solar cell in the late 1970s, today one of the mainstream solar cell technologies, and founded Isofoton in 1981 for its industrial production. He is, arguably, one of the fathers of the science and technology of concentrator photovoltaics and has been active in the research and development of high-efficiency photovoltaic conversion devices, inventing the intermediate band solar cell.
Photovoltaic and renewable energy engineering is an area of research, development, and demonstration in Australia. Two Australian Research Council Centres play a role.
Michelle Yvonne Simmons is an Australian quantum physicist, recognised for her foundational contributions to the field of atomic electronics.
LONGi Green Energy Technology Co. Ltd. or LONGi Group (隆基股份), formerly Xi'an Longi Silicon Materials Corporation, is a Chinese photovoltaics company, a major manufacturer of solar modules and a developer of solar power projects.
A bifacial solar cell (BSC) is any photovoltaic solar cell that can produce electrical energy when illuminated on either of its surfaces, front or rear. In contrast, monofacial solar cells produce electrical energy only when photons impinge on their front side. Bifacial solar cells can make use of albedo radiation, which is useful for applications where a lot of light is reflected on surfaces such as roofs. The concept was introduced as a means of increasing the energy output in solar cells. Efficiency of solar cells, defined as the ratio of incident luminous power to generated electrical power under one or several suns (1 sun = 1000W/m2 ), is measured independently for the front and rear surfaces for bifacial solar cells. The bifaciality factor (%) is defined as the ratio of rear efficiency in relation to the front efficiency subject to the same irradiance.
Anita Ho-Baillie is an Australian scientist who is the John Hooke Chair of Nanoscience at the University of Sydney. Her research considers the development of durable perovskite solar cells and their integration into different applications. She was named as one of the Web of Science's most highly cited researchers in 2019–2022.
David E. Carlson was an American physicist who invented thin film, amorphous silicon based, photovoltaic solar cells.
Guha Subhendu is an Indian American scientist in the field of photovoltaics.
