This is an area of immense interest and growth at IITBNF. In 2010, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Govt. of India, chose to co-locate a National Centre for Photovoltaics Research and Education (NCPRE) with advanced fabrication facilities created under the CEN project at IITBNF. This led to a strong impetus in research on photovoltaics - IITBNF currently houses 7 laboratories (including a class 1000 clean room) that are exclusively dedicated to solar cell research. Comprehensive facilities for modeling, fabrication and characterization of crystalline, thin film, multi-junction and organic solar cells are in place.
Exploring beyond solar energy, researchers at IITBNF are also looking at other widely available energy sources (such as ambient RF and thermal energy) to develop energy scavenging devices for various electronic applications. Improving energy harvesting/scavenging techniques demands innovation across the device evolution scale – from materials to circuits. As a result, it brings together researchers from various disciplines such as Energy Science & Engineering, Chemistry and Electrical Engineering among others.
Some of our current research topics include:
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Simulation, fabrication and characterization of silicon solar cells – development of process technology for high-efficiency solar cell fabrication such as diffusion processes, dry & wet texturing, surface passivation layers and plasma immersion ion implantation |
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Top-down and bottom-up approaches for silicon nanostructure solar cells - amorphous Si/SiN quantum dot multi-junction cell; plasmonics-enhanced thin-film solar cells |
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Reliability studies of thin-film solar cells |
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Organic semiconductor solar cells – design, synthesis and characterization of printable transparent conductors & printable high-mobility organic semiconductors; cells based on P3HT and PCBM blends |
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Perovskite based solar cells |
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Semiconductor sensitized solar cells (SSSCs) – design and evaluation of new materials, surface treatments and nanocomposites for improving solar cell performance. |
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Low temperature, solution processed, hybrid inorganic-organic materials based solar cells for large area and roll to roll processing advantages |
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Nano and spin caloritronics |
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Thermoelectric devices |
Associated faculty:
Chetan Solanki, Anil Kottantharayil, Shaibal Sarkar, Souvik Mahapatra, M. Shojaei Baghini, Swaroop Ganguly, J. Vasi, Pradeep Nair, Brij Mohan Arora, K. L. Narsimhan, Ashwin Tulapurkar, Bhaskaran Muralidharan, Dinesh Kabra
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