IEEE S.F. Bay Area Council e-GRID's
BayAreaTech

WEDNESDAY September 10, 2008
SCV Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology + Women in Engineering Chapters
Speaker: Prof. Peter Peumans, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Stanford Univ, and Deputy Director of the Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics (CAMP)
Time: Dinner (optional) at 6:30 PM, Presentation at 7:30 PM
Cost: $25 if reserved by Sept. 8; $30 after & at door; no cost for presentation
Place: Ramada Inn, 1217 Wildwood Ave (Fwy 101 frontage road at Lawrence Expressway), Sunnyvale
RSVP: by email to Janis Karklins, karklins@ieee.org

In this talk, I will discuss various approaches to harvesting solar energy that promise to lower the cost of solar electrical power. ? I will describe an approach that combines monocrystalline silicon with MEMS processing and advanced packaging to make low-cost, high-efficiency silicon solar cells. ? I will show that organic solar cells are an attractive way to convert sunlight into electrical power since the materials are low-cost, abundant and non-toxic. ? The efficiency of organic solar cells has increased steadily in recent years by virtue of engineered organic nanostructures that optimize exciton and carrier transport. ? I will discuss how metal conductors can be made extraordinarily transparent and solution-processable such that they can be used as transparent electrodes in thin-film solar cells. ? Finally, I will discuss the fundamental limits of light trapping in thin-film solar cells and show how photonic nanostructures can be used to improve solar cell efficiency.

Web: www.cpmt.org/scv/meetings/cpmt0809.html