Post date: Dec 01, 2018 12:50:20 PM
I am writing an update now, after a week spent attending the MRS fall meeting 2018 in Boston.
As usual this conference gathered thousands of researchers around the world, with several symposiums and workshops, dealing on material research and development.
For me it was a very occasion to meet colleagues and discuss different aspects of our projects, collecting useful comments, and opening possible future collaborations. It was also the occasion to present the progress of my work, with a poster. Even if I still think the poster session at MRS are too big and dispersive it was useful sharing my work and collect suggestions.
I also attend to a lot of very interesting presentations, mainly regarding photovoltaic and thermoelectric materials.
Regarding my project and my research, I feeling to be at very important turning point. In the last months while our solar simulator had to stop for a problem with the power supply, I was able to collect many different kind of solar cells that I currently analyzing in order to expand the horizons of my study. Now that the solar simulator is fixed I am working fast and efficiently, and I am confident to have a complete characterization before the end of the year. In the mean time the thermoelectric material is on its way since I purchased few days ago, and I am looking forward to start working with it. I also had a training on water jet cutting in order to be able to cut customized thermoelectric legs form the wafer that I ordered. Finally I also expanded my model in order to able to compare the performance of my hybrid device with solar cells in real operative conditions. This will make me able to evaluate the so-called energy yield of this kind of hybrid devices in different geographical areas of the world. Thus at the beginning of next year I will start to finalizing the hybrid device and finally I will have the first important results of my project.
While my project is at this stage, I am still working (honestly not really continuously) on flexoelectricity. I got some samples from a Japanese professor and I performed a first characterization of this effect. I was amazed to see some very interesting preliminary results. Now it is time for me, to analyze these results and start to understand the physics behind this effect, and to write some theory. Looking forward to that.
Finally I am very exited to say that I will teach a class on "Unconventional photovoltaic effects" during the next IAP period at MIT. This is a workshop that I am organizing with the support of MIT on the limitations of photovoltaic and on non standard photovoltaic systems intended to overcome these limitations. I am very happy to have this great opportunity and I working hard to make the most of it.