![]() Hsu’s new project will be in collaboration with NovaCentrix and Energy Materials Corp., a Rochester, New York-based company that specializes in roll-to-roll manufacturing of perovskite solar panels. Robert Piper, a UT Dallas materials science and engineering doctoral student and lead author of the study, places a flexible plastic substrate on the photonic curing tool. The DOE’s goal is to increase the use of solar energy and cut the cost of its generation in half by 2030. Hsu was awarded a new $800,000 grant (DE-EE0009518) from the agency in 2021 to apply photonic curing to fabricating flexible, transparent electrodes that will enhance the commercial viability of perovskite solar panels. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under the Solar Energy Technologies Office, which provided a $200,000 grant (DE-EE0008544) to Hsu in 2019 as part of an initiative to develop and test new ways to accelerate the integration of emerging technologies into the solar industry. The research was supported in part by the U.S. The UT Dallas researchers are the first to use photonic curing to process both the perovskite and the oxide layers in the thin film at the same time. In the case of the solar cells with which Hsu is working, one layer is halide perovskite, a family of materials that can be used to create solar cells that have shown potential for high performance and low production costs the other is an oxide layer that transports the electric charge generated from sunlight. Read stories about more of the University’s bright stars.įlexible electronic devices are made of different thin films. UT Dallas has earned a reputation for incredibly bright students, innovative programs, renowned faculty, dedicated staff, engaged alumni and research that matters. Photonic curing is a novel technology that is currently used to sinter, or coalesce, printed metal nanoparticles. The research was conducted in collaboration with NovaCentrix, an Austin, Texas-based company that makes photonic curing equipment. “My group is looking at using millisecond light pulses to convert materials instead of using conventional heating processes to do the annealing.” We want to make films fast so that we can take advantage of the economy of scale,” Hsu said. “If you need to anneal the material for minutes, sometimes hours, that’s going to slow down how fast you can make flexible film. Also, heating the pizza to too high of a temperature would damage the crust. To make pizza faster, the time in the oven must be reduced. ![]() Hsu likened the traditional annealing process to cooking a long pizza that moves on a conveyer slowly through an oven. Julia Hsu, professor of materials science and engineering and the Texas Instruments Distinguished Chair in Nanoelectronics in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science We want to make films fast so that we can take advantage of the economy of scale.”ĭr. In this stage, the thin film must be heated to high temperatures, a step that can sometimes take hours and make production costly. ![]() Hsu’s research aims to solve a problem that has prevented large-scale manufacturing of flexible electronics and solar panels: the need to reduce the amount of time for the slowest part of production, called annealing. The most recent study, which details fabricating flexible perovskite solar cells using this process, was published online March 26 in Frontiers in Energy Research. Julia Hsu, professor of materials science and engineering and the Texas Instruments Distinguished Chair in Nanoelectronics in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, published a series of studies in the past year about the method. The experiments could help pave the way for the large-scale production of devices ranging from wearable sensors to solar panels. University of Texas at Dallas researchers have demonstrated that a technique called photonic curing can be used to manufacture thin films used in flexible electronics 1 million times faster than traditional methods. The researchers are the first to use photonic curing to process both the perovskite and the oxide layers in the thin film for flexible electronics at the same time. University of Texas at Dallas researchers fabricated a halide perovskite solar cell, using photonic curing, on glass.
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