As the United States seeks to reinvigorate its job market and move past economic recession, MIT News examines manufacturing's role in the country's economic future through this series on work at the Institute around manufacturing.
Chemistry Prof. Tim Swager in collaboration with the MTL director Prof. Vladimir Bulović, graduate student Jose Lobez, and Dr. Trisha Andrew, constructed blended heterojunction polymeric photovoltaic cells that show 30% power conversion efficiency increase when doped with a small amount (0.25%) of a polymer additive. Additives that sit at the donor-acceptor interface "open a new direction to polymer solar cell research," says Prof. Yang Yang, an electronic materials researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr. Miles Barr, recent chemical engineering Ph.D. graduate, wins the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for his innovative work on paper solar cells.
This is part of an ongoing series about new MTL core faculty members.
This is part of an ongoing series about new MTL core faculty members.