Shining the light on thin film solar
I am Kamala Raghavan, a research scientist in Micro and Nano Structure Lab at the GE Global Research in Bangalore. I am leading the multiscale physics modeling team working towards understanding physics and material aspects of the device. The team here has a lot of experience and knowledge in modeling methods and the physics built into these. A lot of these methods and techniques have found applications in various programs that are important to GE including semiconductor technologies and applications in the aviation industry.
Our modeling efforts for cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin film photovoltaics (PV) are comprehensive. It includes electronic structure theory, microstructure evolution and continuum theories for transport. These computational techniques provide us with deeper understanding of physics and material phenomena occurring at various length and time scales. There have been efforts in each of these areas. However, no one has studied CdTe system using all these approaches simultaneously. This is essential to accelerate CdTe PV research and this is what we are driving for at GE Global Research.
The modeling capabilities we have here, along with experimental data from PrimeStar and and our GE Global Research site in Niskayuna, will help us correlate the physics to the device performance. Such studies along with predictive models at subatomic level will enable us to build transfer functions in order to optimize device performance.
It is very exciting to be a part of this program that is moving towards achieving breakthrough efficiencies. It is also good to be contributing to this program that has great relevance in the present day energy scenario.
Read the full press release on our solar announcement here.
inspiring..