1. About us
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People

Director

Christiana Honsberg (Bio)

Christina Honsberg received her PhD from the University of Delaware in 1992. Until 2000, Dr. Honsberg was faculty at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, working on high efficiency commercial silicon solar cells (the buried contact solar cells which were transferred to multiple industrial partners), advanced concept photovoltaics, and on the world’s first undergraduate degree program in photovoltaic engineering. In 2001, Dr. Honsberg became faculty at Georgia Institute of Technology working on ultra-high efficiency and in 2004 Dr. Honsberg joined the University of Delaware to develop a high efficiency solar program there. This resulted in an NSF-IGERT and a DARPA program, VHESC, focused on 50% solar cells, culminating in the “champion” sub-module efficiency of 38%. In 2008, Dr. Honsberg joined Arizona State University, founding the Solar Power Laboratory. In 2010, she became Director of the NSF-DOE Engineering Research Center QESST, focused on developing PV technologies and educational activates which address the Terawatt Challenge.

Researchers

Stuart Bowden (Bio)

Director of Silicon Program

Stuart Bowden received his Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 1996 for work on static concentrators using silicon solar cells. The solar cell efficiency tester “DarkStar” that he developed during his PhD is still in use over 20 years later for detail characterization of solar cells. Following graduation, he transferred the buried contact solar cell technology from UNSW to Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology In 1998, he joined the Inter-University Micro Electronics Centre (IMEC) in Belgium where he demonstrated rear surface passivation of multicrystalline silicon wafers using boron diffusions and inversion layers. In 2001, he joined Georgia Institute of Technology where he worked on molecular beam epitaxy and the characterization of interface states in a variety of oxide materials. From 2004 – 2008 he led the effort at the University of Delaware on advanced silicon solar cell structures with the first publication on interdigitated back contact heterostructure silicon solar cells. Dr Bowden worked with Sinton Consulting (now Sinton Instruments) from 2001 to 2008 on the development of quasi-steady state lifetime testers and Suns-VOC systems. The testers have become standard characterization tools in the majority of solar production and laboratories throughout the world. In 2005, was awarded an R&D 100 award for his contributions to the Quasi-steady-state photoconductance system that is manufactured by Sinton Instruments. He is the author of the www.pveducation.org that is used for photovoltaic education in industry and academia throughout the world. Dr Bowden is presently the co-Director of the Solar Power Laboratory at Arizona State University where he develops high efficiency solar cells for terawatt production.

Bill Dauksher

Research Lab Manager

Bill Dauksher earned a B.S. degree in Materials Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1988 and an M.S. degree, also in Materials Engineering, from North Carolina State University two years later. After serving nineteen years as a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in Motorola Labs working on myriad aspects of semiconductor and cell phone research and development, he joined Arizona State University in 2009 as technical manager for the Solar Power Laboratory. Mr. Dauksher enjoys working on advanced silicon-based solar cell technology and holds 26 U.S. patents and two defensive publications. Additionally, he is author or co-author on over 100 peer-reviewed journal papers.

 

 

André Augusto 

Head of Silicon Heterojunction Research (augusto@asu.edu)

André Augusto received his PhD in Sustainable Energy Systems in 2013 from the University of Lisbon in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his PhD he developed a new process to grow solar grade silicon ribbons from a gas phase. He also worked extensively on Net Zero Energy buildings and energy efficiency. Nowadays is the head of research on silicon heterojunction solar cells at ASU Solar Power Laboratory. He is leading multiple projects related with silicon solar cells, modules, PV systems and sustainability. In 2017 he experimental demonstrated a silicon device with open-circuit voltage over 760 mV and bandgap voltage offset below 0.35 V. Nowadays is exploring new ways to advance silicon solar cells, for example by using thinner (and flexible) silicon substrates.

 

Stanislau Herasimenka (Bio)

  • Heterojunction silicon solar cells

Jongwon Lee

  • Silicon nano-structured solar cells
  • Multiple exciton generation (MEG) solar cells and structures.

Chaomin Zhang (Bio)

czhang86@asu.edu 

  • III-V solar cells
  • III-V on silicon (GaP on silicon)
  • Maintainance and Operaton of Veeco Gen III  MBE
  • Molecular beam expitaxy (MBE) growth of III-V nanostructures such as quantum dots
  • MOCVD
  • Levelized cost of PV electricity (LCOE)

Graduate Students

Antony Aguilar

Pradeep Balaji

 

  • Graduate Research Assistant
  • pradeep.balaji@asu.edu
  • Process development for diffused junction solar cells
  • Flexible/lightweight silicon solar cells and modules
  • Photoluminescence of silicon solar cells

JeaYoung Choi

  • Silicon Quantum Dots
  • Nanostructured Surfaces   

Joe Karas

 

Sangpyeong Kim

 

  • Graduate Research Assistant / Ph.D. Student
  • skim85@asu.edu
  • Enhanced light trapping for thin silicon solar cells

Katherine Nelson

  • PV instructional and curricular tool development
  • Motivational Psychology and Engineering Education

Sabit Shudanov

Justin Smith

  • III-V solar cells

Apoorva Srinivasa

 

Shujian Xue

  • Crystalline silicon solar cells

Yongjie Zou

  • III-V solar cells
  • Modeling and simulation of carrier transport in nanostructures

 

Undergraduate Students (FURI, Honors & Senior Design)

 

 

Graduated Undergraduate Students

 

Matthew Buresh, Joe Carpenter, Alejandra Casillas, Billy Gardiner, Akash Khare, Derek Lam, Kevin LaRosa, Jacob Marshall, Michelle Martinez, Clay Ozaki-Train, John Wallstrom

 

Visiting Scholars (Past and Present)

Nicole Kotulak

Derek (Deming) Zhang

 

Alumni

Som Dahal

  • Silicon diffused junction solar cells, PERC cells, carrier-selective contact solar cells, Nanostructures and their integration with silicon
  •  III-V Quantum Well and Quantum Dot Structures and their application in PV

Nikolai Faleev

  • Molecular Beam Epitaxy of III-V Compounds, Quantum Wells and Quantum Dots Structures;
  • Material Characterization of Epitaxial Structures, focused on High Resolution XRD, TEM and AFM;
  • Crystalline Defects in Epitaxial Structures: types, density and spatial distribution, correlations with growth conditions. Effect of crystalline defects on physical properties of epitaxial structures. Prediction of crystal perfection; optimization of grown conditions and design of device structures.

Clarence Tracy

  • Materials and processes for silicon solar cells
  • Group IV nanowire devices and processing
  • Silicon nanoelectronics

Mark Bailly (Ph.D. Student)

Jaewon Oh (Ph.D. Student)

Joshua Williams (Ph.D. Student) 

Harsh Jain (MS.c. Student)

Zachary Kiefer (Undergrad Student)

Tim Reblitz (Graduated Student)

Adric Rukkila (Undergrad Student)

Tanmay Monga (MS.C. Student)

Natasa Vulic (Ph.D. Student)

Michael A. Awaah (Visiting Scientist Summer 2011)

Adam Bailey

Keun-Yong Ban (Senior MOCVD scientist at New Jersey)

Bhumika Chhabra (Micron Technologies Solar Division)

Kunal Ghosh (IIT India)

Vivek Sharma (Intel Corporation)

Jeremy Wendte (Installing solar in Bangladesh)

Qun Yang (Freescale Semiconductor)

Anand Krishnan (PhD student at ASU)

Kevin Tyler (PhD student at ASU)

Joseph Schmidt

Edward Lebeau

James Brady

Abhishek Kumar

James Lebeau (L-3 communications)

Parth Mistry

Yeongho Kim (South Korea)

Aymeric Maros ( Solar Junction, San Jose, CA )

Harsh Jain (Diodes Incorporated, Kansas City, MO)

Affiliated Researchers

We work with many researchers nationally and internationally through the QESST ERC (www.qesst.org)