Accelerating emerging PV technologies

By: Christoph J. Brabec

  • Institute of Materials for Electronics and Energy Technology (i-MEET), Department of Materials Science and Engineering, FAU, Martensstrasse 7, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
  • Helmholtz-Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg (HI ERN), Forschungszentrum Jülich , Immerwahrstrasse 2a, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
  • Zernike Institute, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

Keywords: Solar energy, OPV, Perovskites, Materials Genome

The development of complex functional solar materials poses a multi-objective optimization problem in a large multi-dimensional parameter space. Solving it requires reproducible, user-independent laboratory work and intelligent preselection of experiments. However, experimental materials science is a field where manual routines are still predominant, although other domains like pharmacy or chemistry have introduced robotics and automation long before. Human interaction in the process of data acquisition is seen critical due to incomplete assessment of meta-data or hidden processing correlations which complex reproducibility. Materials Acceleration Platforms (MAPs) are regarded as an enabling technology for Data-Driven Material Science, leading to an increased number of concepts and a dynamic evolution of MAP lines. In this talk, Brabec will present his team’s approach to laboratory automation in materials science with a strong focus on fully functional solar devices.

AMANDA (Autonomous Materials and Device Application Platform – www.amanda-platform.com ) was developed as a generic platform for distributed materials research comprising a self-developed software backbone and several MAPs. However, one realizes that accelerating a whole technology requires more than accelerated materials research. It also takes devices and process development to truly accelerate a PV technology. These are concepts are summarized under Technology Acceleration Platforms (TAP).

This talk will stepwise introduce the current concepts and technologies to accelerate solar technologies: from the material to the device and to the process. The outlook will discuss how these platforms can be made communicative to each other in order to transform them into autonomously acting TAP with the power to accelerate the learning curve for a whole solar cell technology.

Biography Christoph Brabec (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg)

Christoph Brabec

Christoph J. Brabec received his PhD (1995) in Physical Chemistry from Linz University, Austria joined the group of Alan Heeger at UC Santa Barbara (USA) for a sabbatical. He joined the SIEMENS research labs (project leader) in 2001, Konarka in 2004 (CTO), Erlangen University (FAU – Professor for Material Science) in 2009, ZAE Bayern e.V. (scientific director and board member) from 2010 till 2021, spokesmen of the Interdisciplinary Center for Nanostructured Films (IZNF) in 2013 and became director at FZ Jülich (IEK-11) in 2018. In 2018 he was further appointed as Honorary Professor at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

His research interests include all aspects of solution processing organic, hybrid and inorganics semiconductor devices with a strong focus on photovoltaics and renewable energy systems. His combined scientific and technological interests supported the spin-out of several companies. He published about 1000 articles, therefrom more than 700 peer reviewed scientific articles and about 100 patents, several books and book chapters and overall received more than 90000 citations. His h-index is over 130 and Thompson Reuters HRC lists him for the last years consecutively as a highly cited researcher.