Research Projects

The limited stocks to the fossil fuels and pollution concerns invite attention of the scientific community and states across the globe potentially towards renewable energy resources. Among the others and abundant availability throughout the year across the globe at most of the parts, the solar energy is the best which is environmentally friendly too. Utilizing the solar energy, a solar cell device directly converts it to the electrical energy which could cater the need of the society and world in the present era of cutting-edge technology. Ever since invention of the photovoltaic effect in 1839 and then first Silicon based solar cell device in 1954, persistent efforts have been made to develop cost effective, highly efficient and stable solar cell device along with an evolution to a variety of materials. The Silicon based solar cell technology is champion among the others at both the laboratory and industrial scales and dominated the market ever since its invention, while the thin film based second and third generations to the solar cells have made significant role to reduce the cost. Accordingly, perovskite solar cells have been rivalry to the Silicon technology with power conversion efficiency of about 26%, while stability issues are still pending. The cheaper metal organic frameworks are employed mostly for the supercapacitors and storage device so far, while the research concerned is lacking for the conversion devices. In the developed devices, the metal organic frameworks have been used as transport layers with the dye sensitized, perovskite and quantum dot solar cells, while these could also be applied as absorber layers.The metal organic frameworks are porous and crystalline hybrid materials comprised of linkage between metal centers (clusters) and organic linkers (organic ligands) and are potentially attracted by the scientific community due to their properties viz. high surface area,tunable porosities, modifiable morphologies,high-quality crystalline product and layer by layer design. In view of the above perspectives and to bridge the gap, metal organic framework based thin film solar cell device will be developed during the proposed project along with cost, stability and efficiency aspects. An effort will also be made to develop metal organic frameworks based transparent photovoltaic and tandem devices. The project will be tenable for a period of three years and significant outcomes will be undertaken, if the SERB grants a chance.