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Doctoral Program in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
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Doctoral Assistant |
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Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces
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Aravind Kumar Chandiran
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Doctoral Program in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
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MY RESEARCH @ EPFL
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1. Aliovalent doping of anatase titanium oxide to enhance the charge collection efficiency :
DSSC employs anatase TiO2 as a standard photoanodic wide bandgap semiconductor. After the charge injection from the excited sensitizer molecule, the electron is transported to the external contacts. During the transport,many loss mechanisms trap the photogenerated electrons viz., recombination with triiodide. So we attempted to modify the surface electronic properties and the optical behaviour of titania by doping with pentavalent and trivalent cations, to enhance the charge collection efficiency. Doped semiconductors are found to be the excellent candidates favoring electron collection.
2. Semiconductor-electrolyte interface passivation by organic molecules and inorganic oxides to block the electron back reaction:
The open circuit potential(Voc) in the DSSC device is goverened by the decay of photogenerated negative charge carriers, in short, electron lifetime in semiconductor. The slower the decay (or higher the electron lifetime) is shown to enhance the Voc. Some organic molecules effciently passivate the exposed surface of TiO2 from triiodide. Though this approach is not brand new, the real effect of the organic additives is not well studied. I am working to discover the fundamental scientific effect due to these additives. Also the pasivation by inorganic oxides have proven to delay the negative carrier recombination.
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MAIN PUBLICATIONS
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Ga3+ and Y3+ Cationic Substitution in Mesoporous TiO2 Photoanodes for Photovoltaic Applications, Chandiran, Aravind Kumar ; Sauvage, Frédéric ; Etgar, Lioz ; Grätzel, Michaël, The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, vol. 115, num. 18, p. 9232–9240
American Chemical Society, 2011
Doping a TiO2 Photoanode with Nb5+ to Enhance Transparency and Charge Collection
Efficiency in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells, Aravind Kumar Chandiran, Frédéric Sauvage, Montse Casas-Cabanas, Pascal Comte,
S. M. Zakeeruddin, and Michael Graetzel, J. Phys. Chem. C, 2010, 114 (37), pp 15849–15856
Solution-processed conjugated polymer organic p-i-n light-emitting diodes with high built-in potential by solution- and solid-state doping. , Sankaran Sivaramakrishnan,Mi Zhou,Chandiran Aravind Kumar,Zhi-Li Chen,Rui-Qi Png,
Lay-Lay Chua,Peter K. H. Ho, Appl. Phys. Lett. 95, 213303 2009
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PATENT
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SEMICONDUCTOR ELECTRODE COMPRISING A BLOCKING LAYER.
Aravind Kumar Chandiran, Md. Khaja Nazeeruddin & Michael Grätzel.
Filed on 08 Dec 2011.
Application No.PCT/IB2011/055550
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ORAL & POSTER PRESENTATION
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[2].Effect of blocking layers deposited by atomic layer deposition on the electron recombination in dye sensitized solar cells
Aravind Kumar Chandiran, Nicolas Tétreault, Md. Khaja Nazeeruddin, Michael Grätzel.
E-MRS fall meeting 2011, Warsaw, Poland
[1]. Effect of aliovalent doping of anatase titanium dioxide in dye-sensitized solar cells.
Aravind Kumar Chandiran, Pascal Comte, Montse Casas-Cabanas, Frédéric Sauvage and Michael Grätzel.
International conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics, 2010, Assisi, Italy.
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AWARDS & HONOURS
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• Erasmus Mundus Fellowship (2007-2009) (Worth €42000)
• University Gold Medal for achieving University RANK ONE in Bachelors degree(2007).
• All India Rubber Industries Association Prize(2007).
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| EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION |
3. Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) - Chemistry and Chemical Engineering(Jan 2010 -.....).LPI, EPFL.
Research area: High efficiency Dye sensitized solar cells.
Thesis advisor: Prof. Michael Grätzel
2. Master of Science - Materials for Energy Storage and Conversion(2007-2009),
(An Erasmus Mundus Consortium Degree)
University of Paul Sabatier,Toulouse, France.
University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France.
Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland.
Thesis : Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
1. Bachelor of Technology - Rubber and Plastics Technology (2003-2007),
Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University,India.
CGPA: 9 (on the scale of 10)-University Rank One (Gold Medal)
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