Maria Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship for Artem Musiienko
Dr. Artem Musiienko has earned has earned a prestigious Maria Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship to improve lead free perovskite solar cells. © F. Krawatzek /HZB
Dr. Artem Musiienko has earned a prestigious Maria Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship for his research project HyPerGreen. In the group of Prof. Antonio Abate, HZB, Musiienko will explore and improve lead-free perovskite solar cells with the goal to increase their efficiency to more than 20 %.
Musiienko completed his doctorate in 2018 at Charles University in Prague on a topic related to semiconductor physics and subsequently worked there as a research assistant. In 2020, he moved to the HZB Institute for Silicon Photovoltaics, where he investigated defects in halide perovskites, among other things. He has contributed significantly to the enormous increases in the efficiency of halide perovskite solar cells, for which the HZB is now internationally renowned.
"However, those highly efficient halide perovskites contain small amounts of lead, a toxic heavy metal that must not be released into the environment," says Musiienko. But lead can be replaced with tin, which has been shown to be non-bioavailable and therefore harmless. So far, however, the efficiency and stability of tin perovskite solar cells are much lower in comparison. Musiienko now plans in his HyPerGreen project to significantly improve tin perovskite solar cells and to explore the mechanisms that limit charge transport in the bulk and at the interface of these materials. Musiienko will use the novel Photo-Hall method, he has recently developed at HZB. “At the moment, together with HZB, we patent this method”, he adds. The method is based on a combination of magnetic field and light and can be used to explore charge transport parameters and limiting factors of the material, which were unreachable otherwise. His goal is ambitious: In his projects he is aiming for efficiencies of over 20 %, a big step forward from the current record of 14.6 % (1).
(1): Efficiency record for tin perovskite solar cells: Jiang, X. et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 143 (29), 10970-10976 (2021))
- A frustrated material, and a frustrating synthesisIn condensed matter physics, "frustration" is a technical term: it describes a lattice geometry where competing magnetic interactions cannot all be satisfied simultaneously. This summer at HZB, I have been trying to *make* a frustrated material, and in the process I discovered that the word also describes rather accurately what happens when your sample explodes for the third time in a week.
- A Rainbow on the Way HomeWhen I arrived at HZB for the International Summer Student Programme, I expected to learn about chemistry, new instruments, and research techniques. During the welcome event, each of us received a small gift bag. Inside was a sticker that read, "Science is Diverse."
- When an unexpected result opens a new research directionEvery morning, as I step out of my room and feel the gentle Berlin sunshine on my face, I tell myself, “Today is a brand-new day.” Yet I never imagined that my research journey in Berlin, after joining HZB, would begin with an experimental result that did not go as expected.