Characterization of Solar Devices (2016)

Undergraduate: McKean Tompkins

Faculty Advisor: Rene Lopez
Department: Physics & Astronomy

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While the current commercial solar device technology is well developed, there are opportunities for more cost-effective and more efficient device production through the use of colloidal quantum dots. Colloidal quantum dots (CQD) are an extremely useful tool for the fabrication of solar devices because of their capacity to be tuned to absorb specific wavelengths of light. One important step in developing more efficient solar devices is characterizing their physical properties through easily repeated tests. My project is working on an experimental setup to measure the density of trap states in the CQD solar devices. I am using LabVIEW to write script to connect the equipment in the lab to the computer to then measure this characteristic of our cells. While the lab has a different setup used for another experiment that works for this, I am working to automate the process to make it a simple routine test so that it can be integrated into the production process.