Online presentation card
Hi, my name is Bruno Lorenzi and I am currently a post-doctoral Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow join between the University of Milano Bicocca and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
I am working on a project related to the development of hybrid thermoelectric-photovoltaic solar harvesting devices (see My research) .
Previously I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Materials Science at the University of Milano Bicocca in Italy. During this appointment I started to be attracted by hybrid thermal-photovoltaic systems, and I focused my activity especially on hybridization of solar cell with thermoelectrics.
At the Department of Materials Science of Bicocca I also got my PhD in Materials Science with a project on nanoengineered silicon thin films for thermoelectric applications (see my PhD thesis ). During my PhD I got in touch with the thermoelectric field under the supervision of Prof. Dario Narducci, and I had also the great opportunity to spend six month in the nanoheat lab of Prof. Ken Goodson at Stanford University.
I got my Master’s Degree in Physics at the University of Milano Bicocca with a thesis dedicated to the development of CIGS based thin film solar cells under the supervision of Prof. Maurizio Acciarri.
My research vision
My research effort is going to tackle the problem of the limited efficiency of light-to-electricity converters, with the aim of developing a new class of efficient and cost-effective devices. Actually, the conversion of light into electricity is one of the most prominent and diffuse way in which our society can harvest renewable energy, and it is at the base of many everyday technologies. However, because of some fundamental limitations, the efficiency of these systems is bound to low values, preventing their wider diffusion. New solutions are urgently needed to overcome these limitations in order to step into a new generation of light harvesters. It is clear that at the core of the problem there is the not optimal design of nowadays devices, based on p-n junctions, in which carrier thermalization dominates energy losses. A new device architecture based on different effects has to be outline.