is organized by the Institute of Thermomechanics CAS,, v. v. i.
at 10:00
in the lecture rooms B or A in the main building of the Institute of Thermomechanics CAS, v. v. i. (contact here)
 

Contact persons: Ing. Radek Kolman, Ph.D., Ing. Hanuš Seiner, Ph.D.

 

Wednesday, November 7, 2018, 10:00 h, conference room B

 

The biggest breakthrough in the "traditional" energy sector of the last decades is the emergence of new methods of mining (fracking) in the USA. Over the past decade, the US has transformed from a natural gas importer into an exporter; in this decade, the same is happening for oil. The trend continues: International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that in the next three years 80% of new oil production in the world will come from the United States. How is this change manifested in the relationship between Europe and the US?

 

 

Currently photovoltaics is becoming an established industrial field with the global installed capacity over 400 GWp, with perspective of reaching the terawatt installed capacity within the following decade. The field is dominated by silicon wafer based cells which reached the unforseen low system prices. The advantages of silicon thin film based photovoltaics of lower consumption of semiconductors and shorter energy payback time was not sufficient to overcome the disadvantage of lower efficiencies (record is 14 % for Si thin films is about half of the best Si wafer based cell). The most recent record efficiencies are due to the combination of the two technologies: the interdigitated back contacted silicon heterojunction based cells reached 26.7 % efficiency by combining high quality wafer with very thin silicon films for preparing passivating selective contacts. In another parallel development silicon thin films make part of silicon nanowire based solar cells which unite the concept of geometrically thin – optically thick films with simple manufacturing. In our group we have contributed to the field by developing optical profilometry for nanometer thin films based on Raman spectroscopy, microscopic methods for characterizing the local properties of the silicon nanostructures or for exploring photovoltaic materials and we explore new ways of junction engineering by inserting 2D materials or self-assembled dipolar molecule monolayers.