Post date: Sep 24, 2018 08:50:20 AM
Here we go, at the beginning of the fall, to give an update on my project.
The weeks still flight as usual and I am starting feeling the end of my stay at MIT becoming nearer and nearer. Even if I am feeling a little of pressure because of this, I would say that things are starting to become really concrete in my work.
Strictly regarding my project, the characterization on the amorphous silicon solar cells that I bought went well. Now I have a clear idea of what I want to do and what I should get from the real device. In the mean time I started to talk with a Marie-Curie fellow that I met during a conference who is working on perovskites solar cells at the EPFL in Lausanne in Switzerland. We decided that it worth trying to evaluate, on the basis of a characterization on his solar cells, what would be the efficiency gain when hybridized with thermoelectrics. This is really promising since perovskites are supposed to have all the characteristics needed for a beneficial coupling with thermoelectric generators. Let's see what we will get.
At the same time, I started to look around to see how I can expand the horizons of my research. This has been a suggestion of my supervisor at MIT (from the very beginning I would say). Honestly at first glance I was a little concern about this suggestion, because it means increasing the amount of work I have to do, but now I really see the benefits. I am learning so much in these days and I discovered several promising approaches that would fit perfectly with my project goals, and that I never heard about it before. I feel that I am really expanding the options that I have, other than my brain.
In these days I started working with a "new" effect called flexo-electricity. Is kind of related with piezo-electricity but, the interesting thing is that it happens in all materials (not only for the non-centrosymmetric class). This effect is strongly related with both thermoelectricity and photovoltaics. I crushed into this by chance a couple of months ago when I saw this paper http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/04/18/science.aan3256. From there I started working thinking on an experiment that can reveals the potential of this effect, and is combination with thermoelectricity and photovoltaics. I have already built a contact with a professor in Japan (a former visiting scholar in the MIT group in which I am working today) who is very interested on working with me on that. I am really excited about it. Let’s see what we can get.
I close this update reporting on a new paper of mine just published on Designs (http://www.mdpi.com/2411-9660/2/3/32). We discuss on a long debated option for thermoelectric – photovoltaic hybridization, namely the electrical hybridization between the two components of this hybrid systems.