Speaker: Prof. Ted Sargent
University of Toronto, Canada
Date & Time: Monday 27th February at 2pm
Venue: Auditorium Buildings 4/5
Light refreshments will be provided
Abstract: Vast advances in materials and physical chemistry have led us to the point that, today, we can create a wide range of tunable, solution-processed materials whose spectral properties span the visible and infrared. These are enabling flexible solar cells, top-surface photodetectors, and ubiquitous light sources.
In this talk, I will discuss recent advances that leverage innovations from inorganic synthetic chemists and physical chemists and apply them in the engineering of high-performance optoelectronic devices. I will then focus in particular on the promise of solution-processed materials that can augment the best commercial silicon solar cells, including both high-bandgap perovskite front cells, and also small-bandgap quantum dot infrared back cells.
I will then discuss a further implication of rapid progress in the cost-effective conversion of solar energy into electrical power. These advances bring about a new challenge, namely, the need for massive (seasonal-scale) storage of energy. I will describe how the use of computational materials science, spectroscopies including ultrafast and synchrotron, and advances in materials chemistry, are accelerating the creation of new catalysts for CO2 reduction and oxygen evolution. I will discuss recent advances including a new high-activity OER catalyst and a low-overpotential CO2 reduction catalyst based on field-induced reagent concentration.
Biography: Ted Sargent is University Professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology and also serves as Vice President - International for the University of Toronto. He is founder and CTO of InVisage Technologies Inc. of Menlo Park, and a co-founder of Xagenic Inc. of Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; a Fellow of the AAAS "...for distinguished contributions to the development of solar cells and light sensors based on solution-processed semiconductors;" and a Fellow of the IEEE "... for contributions to colloidal quantum dot optoelectronic devices." He is Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering for “… ..ground-breaking research in nanotechnology, applying novel quantum-tuned materials to the realization of full-spectrum solar cells and ultra sensitive light detectors. The impact of his work has been felt in industry through his formation of two start-up companies."
He received the B.Sc.Eng. (Engineering Physics) from Queen's University in 1995 and the Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Photonics) from the University of Toronto in 1998.