Time Schedule:
Hugh Hillhouse
CHEM E 599
Seattle Campus
Readings or lectures and discussions of topics of current interest in the field of chemical engineering. Subject matter changes from year to year. Prerequisite: permission of instructor.
Class description
There will be some introductory material on the big picture regarding energy and the various uses of solar energy (biomass, solar thermal, etc.), but the course will mainly focus on photovoltaics. The goal of the course will be to bring graduate students (who potentially do not have any solid state physics background) up to a working graduate-level knowledge of solar cells. Students will learn the basic photophysics, thermodynamics, and transport phenomena necessary for photovoltaic research. In particular, the course will focus on bringing students up to speed to be able to conduct and interpret current-voltage data, capacitance-voltage data, quantum efficiency measurements, reflectivity phenomena, minority carrier lifetime measurements, and deep-level transient spectroscopy. The text for the course will be Jenny Nelson’s “The Physics of Solar Cells,” but I have written an extensive interactive notebook in Mathematica that will also be used for the course.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
