Carrier Dynamics Engineering for High-Performance Electron-Transport-Layer-free Perovskite Photovoltaics

Jeffrey T. Glass is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Institute for Enterprise Engineering. He holds the Hogg Family endowed chair in Engineering Management and Entrepreneurship. Formerly, he was the Co-Director of The Institute for the Integration of Management and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) and held the Joseph F. Toot, Jr. endowed chair in the Case School of Engineering. Prior to these university appointments he was the Vice President of R&D for Kobe Steel USA Inc. Jeff received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Virginia. He also received an MBA from Duke University's Global Executive (GEMBA) program.

His current research involves electronic materials and the associated devices/instruments improved by these materials. In particular, miniature mass spectrometer development and engineered systems for waste treatment are systems of focus for his lab. He is also involved in the development of joint educational, research and technology transfer activities related to the intersection of business and technology. He consults and holds advisory board appointments with various companies in materials-related areas and has served as an expert witness in patent litigation. Prior to his appointment at CWRU, he was the Vice President of R&D for Kobe Steel USA Inc. with a focus on electronic materials. Prior to joining Kobe Steel, he was a tenured faculty member in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University. He has been involved in the study of Innovation Management in technology-based organizations with a focus on the early stages of technical development and received the 2004 Industrial Research Institute’s Maurice Holland Award for his paper entitled “Managing the Ties Between Central R&D and Business Units.”

Jeff's technical research has focused on the growth and characterization of thin films for electronics, including carbon nanotubes, graphene, graphenated carbon nanotubes, diamond, silicon carbide and chalcogenides. Chemical vapor deposition, sputtering, materials analysis and electronic/electrochemical properties are his areas of interest. Miniature mass spectrometers, decentralized waste treatment, smart toilets and photoelectrochemical energy conversion devices are some of the applications his lab focuses on. He has published over 175 papers and book chapters, edited seven books and is a co-inventor on 14 patents. He has been a short course instructor for several professional societies and companies and has organized numerous conferences. He has given over 75 invited presentations in 12 different countries. He served as a member of a Presidential Science Advisor's committee for the assessment of diamond technology in Japan and has received two teaching awards and the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator award. He has held adjunct faculty appointments at North Carolina State University, Case Western Reserve University and the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina where he has taught executive courses on Managing Innovation.

Our research involves the synthesis of compounds, supermolecular assemblies, nano-scale objects, and electronic materials with unusual ground-and excited-state characteristics, and interrogating these structures using state-of-the-art transient optical, spectroscopic, photophysical, and electrochemical methods. Research activities span physical inorganic chemistry, physical organic chemistry, synthetic chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry, spectroscopy, photophysics, excited-state dynamics, spintronics, and imaging. My laboratory: (i) designs chromophores and supermolecules that display exceptional opto-electronic properties and elucidates their excited-state dynamics, (ii) engineers highly conjugated molecular structures for optical limiting, specialized emission, and high charge mobility, (iii) designs conjugated materials and hybrid molecular-nanoscale structures for energy conversion reactions, (iv) develops molecular wires that propagate spin-polarized currents, (v) fabricates emissive nanoscale structures for in vivo optical imaging, (vi) engineers de novo transition metal cofactor-binding proteins that test light-driven biological energy transducing mechanisms and realize opto-electronic functionalities not found in nature, and (vii) designs and interrogates complex molecular and nanoscale assemblies in which ultrafast energy and charge migration reactions are controlled by quantum coherence effects.

Dr. Liu’s research interests are focusing on the chemistry and material science of nanoscale materials. Specific topics in his current research program include: Self-assembly of nanostructures; Preparation and chemical functionalization of single walled carbon nanotubes; Developing carbon nanotube based chemical and biological sensors; SPM based fabrication and modification of functional nanostructures.

David Mitzi received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Engineering Physics from Princeton University in 1985 and his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 1990.  Prior to joining the faculty at Duke in 2014, Dr. Mitzi spent 23 years at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, where his focus was on the search for and application of new electronic materials, including organic-inorganic perovskites and inorganic materials for photovoltaic, LED, transistor and memory applications.  For his final five years at IBM, he served as manager for the Photovoltaic Science and Technology Department, where he initiated and managed a multi-company program to develop a low-cost, high-throughput approach to deposit thin-film chalcogenide-based absorber layers for high-efficiency solar cells. Dr. Mitzi’s current research interests involve making emerging photovoltaic materials more effective, cost-efficient and competitive for the energy market. He holds a number of patents, and has authored or coauthored more than 200 papers and book chapters.