Christopher Petoukhoff is among the first cohort of awardees of the KGFP. He will conduct his research at the KAUST Solar Center (KSC) under the supervision of KSC Interim Director, Professor Frédéric Laquai. Christopher obtained his Ph.D. in 2017, in Materials Science & Engineering from Rutgers University, USA. Before joining KAUST, he conducted postdoctoral research at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), Japan and also spent 6 months as a visiting researcher at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), India. During his Ph.D. and first postdoc, Christopher investigated methods of enhancing organic photovoltaic (OPV) efficiencies using nanomaterials and nanophotonic structures. He combined multi-scale materials characteriza[1]tion approaches, coupled with photo-physics measurements, to determine the impact of two-dimensional materials and plasmonic metasurfaces on organic active layer films. This, combined with electromagnetic, optical, and electrical simulations, aids in predicting methods of improving OPV efficiencies.

For his KGFP research project, Christopher will investigate the impact of 2D semiconductors as multifunctional hole-transport-layers (HTLs) in high-efficiency OPV devices.

For more info on the KGFP, please visit the link:

kgfp---guidelines.pdf (kaust.edu.sa)