Development of Phonon Cavities for Probing the Electron-Phonon Interaction in III-V Semiconductors

The School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering (SPREE) is widely regarded as the one of the leading Photovoltaics research hubs in the world. Building on its world-leading research, the school attracts leading international researchers in the area of photovoltaics, consistently ranked amongst the leaders worldwide in the photovoltaic field through international peer review. It is one of the nine schools within the Faculty of Engineering at University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia and grew out of the Australian Research Council Photovoltaics Centre of Excellence in response to the growing photovoltaic and renewable energy industry.

A key fundamental energy loss in the photovoltaic power conversion process is the loss of excess energy of photogenerated carriers. These losses are through phonons, quantised vibrations of the absorber lattice. We have recently reported on innovative ways to control the types of phonons present in structures using a so called adiabatic potential approach to create phonon cavities with long lived phonons, as reported recently here: Long‐Lived Acoustic Phonon and Carrier Dynamics in III–V Adiabatic Cavities – Hanif – Advanced Functional Materials – Wiley Online Library.

We are looking for a keen and energetic student to work on improving these phonon cavities through novel structure designs and through identifying materials with the requisite properties to make a good cavity. You will not only design new phonon cavities, you will characterise them by transient reflectivity, allowing for observation of the vibrating surface of these structures, and powerful time resolved techniques to study the impact of the phonons amplified in the cavities, on the structures optoelectronic properties.

SPREEs Research Activities

UNSW has been responsible for developing the most successfully commercialised photovoltaic technology internationally. Most of the solar cell technology that dominates the market (in particular the ‘PERC’ design) was invented and developed here. Currently there are a wide range of activities in the school spanning novel processing techniques for improved performance of commercial silicon cells, advanced characterisation techniques, integrating silicon with novel materials for the development of multi-junction solar cells, as well as advanced concepts for totally new approaches to photovoltaic and other energy producing device designs.

Requirements

Undergraduate Degree: Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering, Physics or Materials Science or similar. Overall GPA must be at least 80% or equivalent.

Masters Degree: Priority will be given for those who graduated from a Masters by research program, with a strong semiconductor physics emphasis, can be theoretical or experimental focused. Overall GPA must be at least 80% or equivalent.

Prior research experience is considered key for competitive scholarships for international students.

Please contact A/Prof Stephen Bremner (spbremner@unsw.edu.au) for further information. For your application please also attach the following documents: CV, academic transcript, and your motivation for doctoral studies. Please include how you feel your background potential aligns with the project.