RESEARCH AREAS

RESEARCH AREAS

Nanostructured Architectures for Photovoltaic & Photochemical Energy Conversion

Nanostructured Materials for Solar Cells subgroup is highly interdisciplinary, employing organic, inorganic, physical and materials chemistry to tackle diverse problems associated with dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC's or Gratzel cells).

DSSC's consist of modular components which are highly interdependent and any significant advance in DSSC's will likely require new photoanodes. Our group has developed a materials-general route to fabricate controlled dimension, ordered, nanotubes by conformally coating anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes via atomic layer deposition (ALD). We use a variety of photophysical (transient absorption, IMVS/IMPS) and electrochemical (Impedence Spectroscopy, voltammetry) measurements to investigate the charge dynamics in these new electrode architectures. ALD is also used to create more complex architectures, for example coating nanoparticle electrodes with ultra-thin layers of various metal oxides devices to modulate interfacial electron-transfer reactions as well as creating multi-layer structures to enhance charge transport.

We are also actively developing highly conjugated porphyrin aligomers are "super-chromophore" dye molecules and their attachment chemistry on semiconducting surfaces. The intra and intermolecular transfer of excitation energy (excitons), as well as intra and intermolecular electron tranfer, are our fundamental concerns. Several photophysical techniques, including transient absorbance and fluorescence, steady-state absorbance and fluorescence, and transient DC photoconductivity (TDCP) spectroscopy, are used to investigate these interesting and complex charge dynamics.

April 2010