I am Amit Kumar, an Early-Stage Researcher working under the supervision of Prof. Henry Snaith at the Department of Physics (Clarendon Laboratory) University of Oxford, UK. I am part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network project called, PERSEPHONe (PERovskite SEmiconductors for PHOtoNics), coordinated by IIT, which wants to generate new skills, knowledge and innovation by training your researchers like me for the development of a novel technological platform for photonics based on metal-halide perovskite semiconductors.

I specifically choose this renewable energy Programme to learn and understand how to harvest this vast source of energy coming from the sun at its maximum potential and minimize carbon footprint. Currently, the major source of energy is fossil fuel and our higher dependencies over this conventional sources of energy is a major cause for environmental issues like ozone depletion, increasing global warming, the rise in sea level etc. So a favorable shift towards renewable energy is required for sustainable growth because renewable energy technologies have a much lower impact on the environment than with conventional energy technologies. If we look at renewable energy sources, one can clearly observe that a different potential of individual because of intrinsic limits. Likewise, energy extractable from wind 2-4TW, tidal as 2TW, hydroelectric as 4.5TW, Biomass as 5-7TW, geothermal as 9.7TW and surprisingly solar as 36000TW that’s a huge and yet very limited extracted when compared to others.

Solar energy (e.g., Photovoltaic Cells) is a major and predominate source of energy among renewable energy sources. However, the fabrication of these devices requires costly and environmentally unfriendly high-vacuum deposition and high-temperature annealing processes for optimal device performance.

Using perovskite semiconductors, I have mainly focused on developing clean solutions to develop optoelectronic device such as LED’s or PV cells. I am developing low temperature processed and green solvent based perovskite materials with excellent optoelectronic quality (such as high PLQY). Moreover, I will focus on the deposition of uniform and high electronic quality thin-films with novel perovskite materials over the large areas for application in LEDs.

In future, I would definitely like to continue research work to develop new materials for optoelectronic devices as a researcher in academic domains. Finally, thanks to my co-worker, collaborators, global scientific community and the funding agency.