20 Nov Solar Future 2015

[vc_text_separator title='' title_align='separator_align_left' border='no' border_color='' background_color='' text_color=''] I recently attended the Solar Future 2015 symposium organized by KAUST from November 7 to 11. Solar Future 2015 is KAUST’s scientific and technology symposium on solar energy. This event gathered international experts from the academic and industrial communities to share their vision for the energy sector and their most recent results in the field of solar energy conversion. Three days with keynote presentations and networking opportunities made this symposium an exclusive event with worldwide impact. About twenty institutions from Europe, USA, and Asia were represented, including US national laboratories (NREL, LANL), and universities (including Stanford, Princeton, EPFL), with core competencies in energy and solar photovoltaics (PV). For the first time in this series of symposia, Solar Future 2015 combined both emerging and mature technologies to pave the way towards the future of solar energy, at high efficiency and low cost.   One of my current projects deals with first-principles investigations of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite solar cells, thus the most interesting talks for me were related to this rapidly emerging field. Dr. Leijtens Tomas from Stanford University gave a talk titled "Towards Stable & Efficient Hybrid Tandem Solar Cells Using Metal Halide Perovskites" where he highlighted recent developments in understanding and overcoming stability concerns...