UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

2005000: Solar energy technology and lighting technology based on solid state devices have promise to reduce carbon emissions and to increase the energy security of the United States while benefitting from the reliability and volume-based cost reduction that has been a characteristic of the integrated circuit technology. The major barrier currently impeding the wide spread use of photovoltaic energy conversion and solid state lighting is the cost of the technologies. Although the conversion efficiency of both technologies can be improved further, an order of magnitude cost reduction is needed in both technologies to enable competitive implementation against incumbent technologies. The proposed center has as its goals to demonstrate new technologies based on emerging nanostructure and organic materials that will enable photovoltaic energy conversation to become a significant portion of the world’s electricity infrastructure and solid state light emitting devices to become the dominant lighting technology in the world. To accomplish this, we will develop materials and devices that will lead to photovoltaic efficiencies exceeding 50% in optimized cells that can be manufactured on large scale and produce electricity at a cost competitive with current power plants. Similarly, we envision a white LED technology that produces a luminous efficiency exceeding 200 lumens per watt at the cost of common fluorescent and compact fluorescent sources, with comparable output. These breakthroughs will be achieved by exploiting the new degrees of freedom in design and fabrication technology that can be achieved by the manipulation of materials properties at the atomic scale that is inherent in the materials systems we will study. The Energy Frontier Research Center in emerging materials for solar energy and solid state lighting has as its goals the invention of new solar cell and LED designs based on nanostructured and organic materials. An interdisciplinary team from four major research Universities with expertise in nanostructure synthesis, organic molecule and polymer design and synthesis, optical and transport characterization of nanostructures, and device physics, fabrication and characterization will undertake fundamental studies to develop a broad understanding of the relationship between materials structure and the ultimate device performance. From this understanding new device designs will emerge that capitalize on our ability to engineer the materials at the atomic scale in these materials systems. Because both nanostructured semiconductors and organic materials can be synthesized by low energy processes, we expect that the resultant device concepts can be assembled on low cost media for eventual cost effective implementation. The development of cost effective processes is not part of the activities of the center, but we are mindful of the eventual cost goals of the applications. The outcome of our research will be the solar cell and LED designs that exhibit the desired performance goals. The objectives of the Center research during the first five years will be to develop the fundamental control at the atomic scale, the understanding of materials properties and processes at that level to permit the rational design of solar cells and LEDs based on these novel materials, the understanding of interface and structural characteristics that control device performance, and the path to the fabrication of devices that demonstrate performance comparable to current technology.

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