Summer Research Project

Hello everyone, Its been a long time since ai wrote in my blog!!!!!! I was in the University of Massachusetts, Amherst working in the Chemistry Department with Prof. D. Venkataraman. I was working in the improvement of Photovoltaic Cells but why? The PV Cells that are in the market right now are Silicon Solar Cells and they are very expensive and their efficiencies are around 22%-26%. Some scientists where working on PV Cells and they came up with a Solar Cell made of Poly(3 hexylthiophene) or P3HT and [6,6]-phenyl-C-butyric acid methyl ester or PCBM. This SC has a 5% efficiency. They continued working in the improvement of the SC and they replaced the electron conductor PCBM with CdSe because CdSe has more movility and it is a better electron donor. When they tested the efficiency of the SC it had a 2.7% efficiency. This happened because CdSe was retaining the electrons because P3HT wasnt working as a good acceptor.  My work in the laboratory was to replace electron acceptor P3HT with Se because it is a better electron acceptor. My mentor and I found  way of depositing CdSe and Se in the electrode wich is Indium Tin Oxide or ITO. I used an ITO electrode that had a cleaved template on top made of PHEMA and Norland (Polymers). First I deposited CdSe in the cleaved template and dissolved the PHEMA and Norland in order to deposit the Se in the empty spaces left after dissolving the polymers. As for the efficiencies of my template I dont know I worked on this project for 8 weeks. I gained skills such as working with the X-Ray Diffraction and perfected the ones I already had: Scanning Electron Microscopy and the Spectrophotometer. This was a very awesome experience but at the same time very challenging because it was pure chemistry and I am a biology major. However I loved it because I learner a lot in the field of nanotechnology and material sciences and I know that in the future I can apply those skills during my PhD.