Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Canada’s commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050 can be achieved by understanding the challenges with existing materials used for sustainable energy. Along with this, Canada’s semiconductors council’s report for “road map 2050” seeks to develop semiconductor chip independence by developing technologies for conventional materials. The lack of implementable, scalable, and cost-effective technologies to harvest energy (in the case of solar energy), convert energy (into chemical energy – e.g., sustainable fuels such as hydrogen for transportation), and store energy (e.g., in batteries or carbon-neutral fuels on both household and grid-scales) is arguably the most significant technological bottleneck we currently face. The discovery of new semiconductor materials will be important towards Canada’s technological independence from the global supply chain and the development of new sustainable energy technologies. The objectives of the proposed research program are: 1) Identifying rational design principles for noncentrosymmetric structures to study their optical properties 2) Generating low-cost and air-stable organic-inorganic chalcogenides and pnictides for solar cell applications 3) Designing next-generation solution-processible electronics thin films The results of this research will enable progress in sustainable energy conversion (infrared lasers), harvesting (solar cells), and storage (spintronics). The research will address several unanswered questions in synthesizing highly efficient semiconductor materials: 1) develop rational synthetic design principles for discovering new chalcogenide-containing heteroanion materials as promising NLO materials; 2) demonstrate band gap engineering to obtain high-performing materials with a large LIDT, develop multi-junction solar cells; 3) design new synthetic methodologies to obtain high-quality single crystals for practical laser and spintronics applications; 4) use organic cation substitution and intercalation for solution processible and low-cost fabricated thin-film technologies. The knowledge from the initial investigation will help direct future studies of clean technologies like solid-state batteries, catalysis, and fiber optics.