Dr. Sourav Maiti

I joined the Optoelectronic Materials group at TU Delft in November 2018 under supervision of prof. dr. Laurens Siebbeles. My project is related to “Singlet Fission Sensitized Silicon Solar Cells”.

I have obtained my PhD in Chemistry from Savitribai Phule Pune University, India under the guidance of Prof. Hirendra N. Ghosh (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) and Prof. Santosh K. Haram (Savitribai Phule Pune University). During my PhD I worked on the carrier dynamics in semiconducting nanocrystals (quantum dots) and application of these materials in solar cells. Prior to that I pursued my MS from Texas A&M University, USA, MSc from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India and BSc from Jadavpur University, India.

Short Description of my project.

Photons having energy higher than the band-gap of Si lead to production of electrons and holes with an excess energy that is wasted as heat. Singlet fission in combination with Si photovoltaics can potentially reduce this heat loss and increase the solar cell efficiency beyond the Shockley-Queisser limit. Singlet fission is a spin-allowed process where a singlet exciton splits into two triplets. Therefore, through singlet fission the high energy photons can be converted to two low energy triplet excitons. The electron and/or hole of the triplet exciton can transfer to Si. Through combination of ultrafast transient absorption and terahertz spectroscopy these charge transfer processes will be investigated. The efficiency of the charge transfer processes depend on the structure and molecular orientation of the singlet fission molecule. Therefore, the charge carrier transfer dynamics will be investigated for new molecules with the aim to optimize exploitation of singlet fission in a solar cell.

This research received funding from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in the framework of the Materials for sustainability and from the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the framework of the PPP allowance.