Fyzikální ústav Akademie věd ČR

Mgr. Ing. Neda Neykova, Ph.D., received the 2015 Rector’s Award of the Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague for outstanding doctoral thesis. Her doctoral thesis is titled ZnO nanocolumns for thin film silicon solar cells with high efficiency. Neda Neykova was a PhD student both at CTU under the supervision of prof. Ing. Zdeněk Bryknar, and at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences under the supervision of RNDr. Milan Vaněček, CSc.

Her doctoral thesis, successfully defended in September 2015, is based on preparation and characterization of ZnO nanocolumns, which were used as a transparent conductive electrodes for thin film silicon (TF-Si) solar cells. In collaboration with EPFL, Switzerland the hexagonally ordered arrays of ZnO, hydrothermally grown on glass substrates, have been used for deposition of 3-dimentional (3-D) TF-Si solar cells. The hydrothermal growth is an effective and versatile method to obtain ZnO NCs of high optical and electrical quality at low temperatures (<100°C) and as it is described in the thesis could have wide field of applications, including biology

After the defense of her PhD thesis, Neda Neykova continues her work on preparation and further study of 3-D solar cells based on ZnO nanocolumns with various absorbers at the Department of Optical Materials of the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy Sciences in the team led by doc. Ing. Martin Nikl, CSc., in collaboration with the Department of Thin Films and Nanostructures of the same institute in the team led by RNDr. Antonín Fejfar, CSc., and with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, CTU, Prague.