Nanoscience for Renewable Energy Sources

This research project, which utilizes advances made by TUM-IAS host Prof. Paolo Lugli’s effort on modeling and fabrication of nanostructures and nanodevices builds on the expertise of TUM-IAS Hans Fischer Senior Fellow Prof. Stephen Goodnick in two distinct application areas: (1) hybrid solar cells, and (2) light and energy harvesting. The development of sustainable and efficient energy conversion processes and systems is of central importance for our future. The limited availability of fossil fuels as primary energy sources and the concomitant emission of pollutants leading to negative local and global effects on the environment, and poses an enormous challenge for our future energy supply. Among the various renewable energy sources, the largest resource by far is provided by the sun. More energy from sunlight strikes the earth in one hour than all of the energy currently consumed on the planet in one year. However, to make a sizable contribution to the primary energy supply, solar energy must be captured, converted, and stored to overcome the diurnal cycle and the intermittency of the solar resource on earth. The motivation for the project comes from the necessity to develop tools which can help improving the efficiency of existing solar energy conversion systems or designing novel ones. The project aims at setting up a simulation framework based on a series of physical models and Monte Carlo tools able to describe the fundamental processes determining the operation of PC devices and ultimately to provide accurate design tools for their optimization. While the use of such tools is widely established for the design of electronic devices, also at an industrial level, this is not the case for solar cells and other PC devices. The theoretical effort will be supported by experimental investigations carried out in the host institute and in cooperation with other groups at TUM and ASU.

TUM-IAS funded doctoral candidate:
Pietro Luppina (PhD in 2017)

Publications by the Focus Group

2017

  • Soleymani, Touraj; Hirche, Sandra; Baras, John S.: Value of Information in Minimum-Rate LQG Control. IFAC-PapersOnLine 50 (1), 2017, 8963-8968 more…

2015

  • Hathwar, R; Saraniti, M; Goodnick, S M: Energy Relaxation and Non-linear Transport in InAs Nanowires. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 647, 2015, 012029 more…
  • Luppina, Pietro; Lugli, Paolo; Goodnick, Stephen M.: Modeling of silicon heterojunction solar cells. 2015 IEEE 42nd Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC), IEEE, 2015 more…
  • Popescu, Bogdan; Popescu, Dan; Luppina, Pietro; Julian, Treu; Koblmuller, Gregor; Lugli, Paolo; Goodnick, Stephen: Modeling and simulation of In1−xGaAsx nanowire solar cells. 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Nanotechnology (IEEE-NANO) , IEEE , 2015 more…
  • Popescu, Bogdan; Popescu, Dan; Luppina, Pietro; Julian, Treu; Koblmuller, Gregor; Lugli, Paolo; Goodnick, Stephen: Modeling and simulation of In1−xGaAsx nanowire solar cells. 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Nanotechnology (IEEE-NANO), IEEE, 2015 more…

2014

  • Moriya, Rai; Sawano, Kentarou; Hoshi, Yusuke; Masubuchi, Satoru; Shiraki, Yasuhiro; Wild, Andreas; Neumann, Christian; Abstreiter, Gerhard; Bougeard, Dominique; Koga, Takaaki; Machida, Tomoki: Cubic Rashba Spin-Orbit Interaction of a Two-Dimensional Hole Gas in a Strained-Ge/SiGeQuantum Well. Physical Review Letters 113 (8), 2014 more…
  • Rudolph, D.; Schweickert, L.; Morkötter, S.; Loitsch, B.; Hertenberger, S.; Becker, J.; Bichler, M.; Abstreiter, G.; Finley, J. J.; Koblmüller, G.: Effect of interwire separation on growth kinetics and properties of site-selective GaAs nanowires. Applied Physics Letters 105 (3), 2014, 033111 more…
  • Wang, Xiaodong; Zardo, Ilaria; Spirkoska, Danče; Yazji, Sara; Ng, Kar Wei; Ko, Wai Son; Chang-Hasnain, Connie J.; Finley, Jonathan J.; Abstreiter, Gerhard: Valence Band Splitting in Wurtzite InGaAs Nanoneedles Studied by Photoluminescence Excitation Spectroscopy. ACS Nano 8 (11), 2014, 11440-11446 more…
  • Weiß, Matthias; Kinzel, Jörg B.; Schülein, Florian J. R.; Heigl, Michael; Rudolph, Daniel; Morkötter, Stefanie; Döblinger, Markus; Bichler, Max; Abstreiter, Gerhard; Finley, Jonathan J.; Koblmüller, Gregor; Wixforth, Achim; Krenner, Hubert J.: Dynamic Acoustic Control of Individual Optically Active Quantum Dot-like Emission Centers in Heterostructure Nanowires. Nano Letters 14 (5), 2014, 2256-2264 more…
  • Yazji, Sara; Zardo, Ilaria; Hertenberger, Simon; Morkötter, Stefanie; Koblmüller, Gregor; Abstreiter, Gerhard; Postorino, Paolo: Pressure dependence of Raman spectrum in InAs nanowires. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 26 (23), 2014, 235301 more…

2013

  • Koblmüller, Gregor; Abstreiter, Gerhard: Growth and properties of InGaAs nanowires on silicon. physica status solidi (RRL) - Rapid Research Letters 8 (1), 2013, 11-30 more…