Research Overview

Graduate student and Cross-Resnick Fellow, Cora Went, is a member of a research team that developed a simple method for transferring metal contacts onto 2D materials and applied the technique to make ultrathin solar cells. The results of this study have been summarized in the publication,"A New Metal Transfer Process for Van Der Waals Contacts to Vertical Schottky-Junction Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Photovoltaics." The team anticipates that the technique will broadly lead to advances for 2D devices.
Scientific Achievement
We developed a simple method for transferring metal contacts onto 2D materials and used this technique to make ultrathin solar cells.


Significance and Impact
We performed one of the first characterizations of 2D solar cells under one-sun illumination and created a useful technique for 2D researchers.




Technical Details
- Transferring metal contacts creates metal-2D semiconductor interfaces free of Fermi level pinning.
- We measured active-layer internal quantum efficiency >90%, demonstrating efficient carrier collection.
- We measured a power conversion efficiency of 0.5%, comparable to other ultrathin 2D photovoltaics.
C. M. Went, J. Wong, P. R. Jahelka, M. Kelzenberg, S. Biswas, M. S. Hunt, A. Carbone, H. A. Atwater, A new metal transfer process for van der Waals contacts to vertical Schottky-junction transition metal dichalcogenide photovoltaics. Sci. Adv. 5, eaax6061 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax6061
Contact: Harry A. Atwater