Photovoltaics Beyond Silicon: Innovative Materials, Sustainable Processing Technologies, and Novel Device Structures

Photovoltaics Beyond Silicon: Innovative Materials, Sustainable Processing Technologies, and Novel Device Structures presents the latest innovations in materials, processing and devices to produce electricity via advanced, sustainable photovoltaics technologies. The book provides an overview of the novel materials and device architectures that have been developed to optimize energy conversion efficiencies and minimize environmental impacts. Advances in technologies for harnessing solar energy are extensively discussed, with topics including materials processing, device fabrication, sustainability of materials and manufacturing, and the current state-of-the-art. Contributions from leading international experts discuss the applications, challenges and future prospects of research in this increasingly vital field, providing a valuable resource for students and researchers working in this area.

• Presents a comprehensive overview and detailed discussion of solar energy technology options for sustainable energy conversion
• Provides an understanding of the environmental challenges to be overcome and discusses the importance of efficient materials utilization for clean energy
• Looks at how to design materials processing and optimize device fabrication, including metrics such as power-to-weight ratio, effectiveness at EOL compared to BOL, life-cycle analysis

Velumani Subramaniam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, United States. He is presently working on novel micro- and nano-structured materials for harvesting renewable energy and for biomedical applications.

Ryne P. Raffaelle (RPR) earned both a BS and MS in Physics from Southern Illinois University and a Ph.D. in Physics from Missouri University of Science and Technology. He is the Vice President for Research and Associate Provost at Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.). He is the former Director of the National Center for Photovoltaics at the National Renewable Energy Lab of the U.S. Department of Energy. Prior to serving at NREL, he was the Academic Director for the Golisano Institute for Sustainability and Director of the NanoPower Research Laboratory at RIT. He has worked as a visiting scientist at the NASA Glenn Research Center, NASA Kennedy Research Center, and DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is the author of over 200 refereed publications. He is on the Advisory Board of Elsevier’s Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing and is the Managing Editor of Progress in Photovoltaics, published by Wiley Interscience. He is the co-editor of several books on photovoltaics and nanotechnologies.

Senthilarasu Sundaram is an Associate Professor in the School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom. His research interests focus on sustainable energy technologies to create environmentally sustainable materials for energy generation and storage, building integrated applications, thermal storage, water remediation, and low-carbon heating applications.

M.K. Nazeeruddin is a Professor of Chemistry at the EPFL Sion campus, and his current research at EPFL focuses on Perovskite Solar Cells and Light-emitting diodes. He has published more than 780 peer-reviewed papers, ten book chapters, and he is the inventor/co-inventor of over 90 patents. His work's high impact has been recognized by invitations to speak at over 300 international conferences. He appeared in the ISI listing of most cited chemists and has more than 150,000 citations with an h-index of 171. He teaches the “Functional Materials” course at EPFL and Korea University. According to the Web of Science in 2016, he is the 5th most cited chemist in the world and is one of the 19 scientists identified by Thomson Reuters as the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds in 2015. He has been named Thomson Reuters "Highly Cited Researcher" from 2014 to 2021 and listed among the Top 10 researchers in the perovskite solar cell research field by the Times Higher Education. He is directing and managing several industrial, national, and European Union projects. He has been appointed as World Class University professor by Korea University and Adjunct Professor by King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah. He has been elected to the European Academy of Sciences, Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry, and Fellow of Telangana Academy of Sciences and has won the 34th Khwarizmi International Award (KIA) Laureate in Fundamental Sciences, 2021.

Arturo Morales-Acevedo is Full Professor of Electrical Engineering at CINVESTAV – IPN (since 1983) and National Research Fellow (Emeritus) in Mexico. He earned a Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering (CINVESTAV - IPN, México), M. Sc. in Physics (and a David Ross Fellowship recipient, Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN, USA), and M. Sc. in Electrical Engineering (CINVESTAV-IPN, México). Currently he is a Fellow of the Mexican System for Scientific Research (Emeritus). He edited one book on solar cells (Intech, 2013) and is Associate Editor for Solar Energy journal (Elsevier) and Journal of Electronic Materials (Springer). He is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) where he also was a Distinguished Lecturer for the Electron Devices Society. He has done research at University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France), at the National University of Colombia and at the University of Havana (Cuba). He has consulted for several companies related to semiconductor devices and photovoltaics technology. He is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences (AMC), Sigma-Xi, the Academy of Sciences of New York, IEEE and International Solar Energy Society (ISES). He has published over 200 papers in the refereed literature in semiconductors, materials processing, photovoltaics, and device technologies.