Kyu-Tae Lee wins Best Poster Award for colorful solar cells

Kyu-Tae Lee, a doctoral student in electrical engineering, received a Best Poster Award at the 40th Annual Symposium of the American Vacuum Society (AVS) -Michigan Chapter. The theme of this year’s Symposium was, Thin Films for Energy Storage and Conversion Applications.

Kyu-Tae’s research in solid-state nanotechnology focuses on creating colors by exploiting strong light interaction with nanostructures to replace traditional pigment-based color filters.

His poster described the creation of solar cell device structures that enable attractive multi-colored solar cells that can be used on windows and other interior and exterior surfaces. Kyu-Tae said the research team, led by Prof. Jay Guo, was able to create the transmissive and reflective colored solar cells with incidence angle and polarization insensitive performances. “I investigated the optical aspects of the design,” added Lee, “and performed the optical simulations and measurements of the fabricated devices at various angles of incidence. I am now trying to find a way to improve the power conversion efficiency further and apply a similar strategy to other solar cell material systems.”

The presentation was based on two papers:

1. Decorative power generating panels creating angle insensitive transmissive colors, Nature Scientific Reports 4, 4192 (2014).
2. “Colored ultra-thin hybrid photovoltaics with high quantum efficiency,” Light: Science & Applications, to be published (2014).

The research was the subject of a University of Michigan press release and MconneX video, and received significant coverage in the media.