17-05-2011
Application: Low cost Dye and hybrid solar cells for energy harvesting
CENIMAT is searching PhD candidates to apply for a FCT-MCTES grant to develop high technological materials for low cost energy conversion.
The main goal is to develop solar cells based in self-assembled nanostructures and their nanocomposites prepared from synthetic porphyrins that can potentially advance solar energy conversion and can be used onto organic and inorganic solar cells. Porphyrins are synthetic materials for photosynthesis mimetic. Therefore the investigation to be performed includes the study of the material structure and preparation on its optical and electrical properties. The porphyrins will be mainly prepared at Sandia National Labs while at CENIMAT the electro-optical characterization of materials and produced devices will profit of the Excellent facilities. The charge distribution onto the porphyrins and its transport are some of the fundamental properties that should be understand prior its application in energy conversion devices. This can only be achieved using advanced conductive AFM and nanoprobe-SEM combined with a FIB system unique in Portugal. Force mapping AFM should be develop to characterize the crystallinity and amorphocity of the materials (indentation and elasticity mapping), among many other techniques available at CENIMAT.
The materials studied are usually very low cost. Their deposition can be done via inject or just via ´painting´. Therefore those materials will be applied to produce low cost dye solar cells, hybrid (organic-inorganic) and heterojunction solar cells and the properties of the materials will be correlated with the performances of the final devices.
For the production of porphryns short periods of time will be spend in USA (Sandia Labs) where the fellows will take the opportunity to learn how to prepare the porphryn and how to functionalize it.
The PhD work will be supervised by Tito Busani, a specialist in the field that had spend more than 5 years in Sandia Labs and will have as co supervisors Isabel Ferreira and J. Shelnutt from Georgia University and Sandia Labs.
The candidates should express their interest by sending a detailed CV and a letter explaining the interest in the work before end of May to busanit@fct.unl.pt
