Tiburtius Prize for Eike Köhnen
Eike Köhnen (center) was awarded with the Tiburtius Prize for his outstanding dissertation on tandem solar cells with perovskites. In the team of Prof. Steve Albrecht (left, TU Berlin and HZB) he was involved in several world records. Prof. Michael Lehmann (TU Berlin) gave the laudatory speech.
On Tuesday, 6 December 2022, Dr. Eike Köhnen received the Tiburtius Prize (First Place) for outstanding dissertations. Eike Köhnen has contributed to significantly increasing the efficiency of tandem solar cells made of perovskite and silicon, to the point of setting world records.
Eike Köhnen worked on so-called tandem solar cells, a new type of photovoltaic technology that promises significantly higher efficiencies. In Prof. Steve Albrecht's team (TU Berlin and HZB), he combined conventional silicon solar cells with a perovskite cell and analysed with state-of-the-art methods how losses can occur. These insights helped to increase the efficiency of such tandem solar cells to over 29 %. This value was an absolute world record for more than eight months.
Köhnen also obtained two patents as a PhD student. His thesis was assessed with the top mark summa cum laude. In Albrecht's team, Eike Köhnen was also active in science communication and maintained a lively Twitter account.
"The Tiburtius Prize is an outstanding recognition of this excellent dissertation and Eike's pioneering work in the development of solar cells," says Prof. Steve Albrecht, who supervised the PhD-thesis. Co-supervisor Prof. Bernd Rech, who heads the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin as scientific director, adds: "Eike Köhnen has played a major role in our internationally visible successes with tandem solar cells made of perovskite and silicon. I congratulate him on this fine award."
The award is named after Professor Joachim Tiburtius, who was Senator for National Education in Berlin from 1951 to 1963. The State Conference of Rectors and Presidents of Berlin Universities (LKRP) awards three prizes annually, as well as an additional three recognition prizes, to doctoral students at Berlin universities for outstanding dissertations
Title of the dissertation by Eike Köhnen: Optical and Electrical Optimization by Advanced Characterization of Monolithic Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Solar Cells.
- A Story of Baking a CrystalOnce upon a time, I was a kid who loved doing home experiments and unravel the explanation behind everyday phenomena. This passion and curiosity helped me to land up here in Berlin to work on the growth of crystalline materials at the wonderful campus of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. But unlike many other stories, mine starts with an introductory question: What makes growing crystals fun and also challenging?
- The Art of the UnknownThe first major challenge was facing my own initial lack of knowledge. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by entirely new protocols: what can be touched with gloves, what is strictly glove-free, and how to safely move items through the space. As I did not fully know how new equipment operates, getting startled when something goes off-routine is inevitable.
- Special prize by Jugend Forscht awarded to former school internShaoxuan Wang has won a special prize in the Jugend Forscht competition for her project ‘Smart Capsules – intelligent microcapsules for glucose-dependent insulin release’. She designed the project as a “special achievement” for her A-levels. To carry out the experimental work, Shaoxuan was able to spend a further two weeks in the laboratory at the HZB Institute for Electrochemical Energy Storage, where she had completed a school internship two years earlier.