This award supports the Third-Generation Solar Technologies Multidisciplinary Workshop: Synergistic Chemistry-Materials-Mathematical Sciences Approaches to Addressing Solar Energy Problems, which will be held in conjunction with the spring Materials Research Society Meeting in San Francisco, California. Multidisciplinary research is essential for advancing sustainable energy science and technology. Scientists and engineers face many scientific challenges to realizing highly efficient harvesting, conversion, and storage of solar energy. Major advances require out-of-the-box thinking, multidisciplinary and new interdisciplinary approaches. This workshop is designed to encourage new collaborations in which the mathematical sciences are linked in a synergistic way with the physical sciences to develop novel, potentially transformative approaches in solar energy research, an area of much activity but largely incremental advances. The workshop will highlight efforts to leverage the physical sciences with mathematical sciences to address solar energy problems and to develop approaches to new generation solar technologies. Invited speakers were chosen from groups of researchers that have been successful combining the expertise of chemistry, materials, and mathematical sciences to address problems in solar energy science. The targeted audience for this workshop includes chemists, physicists, mathematicians, materials scientists, and engineers. The workshop will expose and challenge a national and international group of researchers, including academic faculty, students, post docs and industrial researchers in all fields of science and engineering to a new way of tackling scientific problems in solar energy science. Scientists under-represented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics are well represented in the conference organizers and invited speakers.
. The targeted audience for the workshop included chemists, physicists, mathematicians, materials scientists, and engineers (of all disciplines). Areas covered included the harvesting, conversion and storage of solar energy. The overall findings of the workshop promoted a strong sense of the challenges and opportunities in the solar energy field. Over 250 people attended the conference and the consensus was that everyone felt that the program was good. Participants included the following individuals: List of Speakers, Panelists, and Organizers/Chairpersons SESSION I 1:25 pm-2:55 pm New Materials for Solar Energy Science Session Chair: Irene M. Gamba, University of Texas at Austin 1:25 pm-1:40 pm WELCOME AND OVERVIEW OF THE WORKSHOP Linda S. Sapochak, National Science Foundation 1:40 pm-2:05 pm OPTICAL HYPERDOPING: TRANSFORMING SEMICONDUCTOR BAND STRUCTURE FOR SOLAR ENERGY HARVESTING Eric Mazur & Michael P. Brenner, School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Harvard University 2:05 pm-2:30 pm HIGH-EFFICIENCY SOLAR GENERATION OF HYDROGEN FUEL FROM NOVEL "TUNED" ELECTROCATALYTIC NANOSTRUCTURES Speaker TBA, Department of Mathematics, University of Texas, Austin 2:30 pm-2:55 pm DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENT SOLID-STATE DYE-SENSITIZED SOLAR CELLS James K. McCusker, Department of Chemistry, Michigan State University 2:55 pm – 3:05 pm BREAK SESSION II 3:05 pm-4:55 pm New Hybrid Materials/Devices for Solar Energy Science Session Chair: André Taylor, Yale University 3:05 pm-3:30 pm NOVEL MATERIALS AND MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS FOR ULTRA-HIGH EFFICIENCY PHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEMS: A NEW PARADIGM IN SOLAR CELLS Chinedum Osuji, Department of Chemical Engineering, Yale University 3:30 pm-3:55 pm ULTRABROAD SPECTRAL BANDWIDTH EXCITONIC THIN-FILM SOLAR CELLS BASED ON CARBON NANOTUBES Stephen Forrest, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, University of Michigan 3:55 pm-4:20 pm PROGRAMMING THE SELF-ASSEMBLY OF MATTER FOR SOLAR ENERGY CONVERSION, University of Pennsylvania 4:20 pm – 4:30 pm BREAK 4:30 pm-4:55 pm LUMINESCENT SOLAR CONCENTRATORS BASED ON SEMICONDUCTOR NANORODS David F. Kelley, School of Natural Sciences, University of California at Merced 4:55 pm-5:20 pm INTEGRATED ELECTRO-PHOTONIC DEVELOPMENT OF POLYMER SOLAR CELLS Rene Lopez, Department of Physics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 5:20 pm-5:35 pm BREAK 5:35 pm – 6:35 pm PANEL DISCUSSION Panel Moderator: Irene M. Gamba, University of Texas at Austin Panelists Russel E. Caflisch, Department of Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles Thomas P. Russell, Department of Polymer Science & Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst Mark E. Thompson, Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California Sean Shaheen, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Denver Gregory Rorrer, Engineering Directorate, Energy for Sustainability program, National Science Foundation Hank Warchall, Mathematical & Physical Sciences Directorate, Applied Mathematics and SOLAR programs, National Science Foundation
