Solar Cloths – Postdoctoral Positions Available

“Solar cloth” is a non-woven fiber cloth that could be produced by electrospinning a
polymeric hole-conducting solution in which dye-anchored wide bandgap
semiconductors are dispersed. This concept is schematically shown below.

Figure shows the concept of photovoltaic fibers. The PV fibers are visualized as a non-woven fiber cloth (A).
The fiber is a percolating network of one-dimensional nanostructures such as nanowires dispersed in a
polymeric hole conducting medium (B). Organic flourophores such as dyes or semiconducting quantum dots
could be anchored to the nanowires widen the absorption wavelength window (C). Light absorption by the
flourophores leads to excitation of electrons to unoccupied molecular orbitals which are then injected to the
conduction band of the wide bandgap metal oxide semiconductor; the oxidized flourophores are regenerated
by a hole-conductor

Efficiency of photovoltaic conversion depends (i) on the degree to which the two species,
i.e., dye-anchored semiconductor and the polymeric hole-conductor, form a percolating
network, (ii) efficiency of charge transport, (iii) and efficiency of charge collection.

Are you interested to work in this research area? Do you have a proposal to increase the
efficiency of the fibers?If so, please write to Dr. Jose Rajan (nnijr@nus.edu.sg) with
your complete CV.