DOE Awards $15 Million to Caltech's Solar Energy Research

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) announced on Wednesday that it will be awarding $15.2 million to Caltech's Light-Material Interactions in Energy Conversion (LMI) program, one of 32 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) nationwide that will receive a combined $100 million over the next four years to pursue innovative energy research.

The LMI-EFRC is directed by Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science, and is a collaborative partnership of researchers in photonics (the generation, manipulation, and detection of light) at Caltech, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Stanford University, and Harvard University.

The DOE received more than 200 proposals for EFRCs. Caltech is among 22 centers whose initial funding, granted in 2009, is being extended for another four years. During its first funding period, among other accomplishments, LMI-EFRC fabricated complex three-dimensional photonic nanostructure and light absorbers; created a solar cell with world-record-breaking efficiency; and developed the printing-based mechanical assembly of microscale solar cells.

"In recent years the solar energy landscape has been fundamentally altered with the recent growth of a large worldwide photovoltaics industry," says Atwater. "The most important area for basic research advances is now in enumerating the scientific principles and methods for achieving the highest conversion efficiencies. There is a new era emerging in which the science of nanoscale light management plays a critical role in enabling energy conversion to surpass traditional limits. This is where the Light-Material Interactions EFRC has focused its effort and is making advances."

LMI-EFRC will be using its new DOE award to address opportunities for high-efficiency solar energy conversion, with a goal of making scientific discoveries that will enable utilization of the entire visible and infrared solar resource.

"We are proud of the accomplishments of Professor Atwater, his colleagues, postdocs, and students in the Light-Material Interactions effort and are gratified that this effort will go beyond its great accomplishments to date through the renewed funding from the DOE," says Peter Schröder, deputy chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science and the Shaler Arthur Hanisch Professor of Computer Science and Applied and Computational Mathematics. "Harry exemplifies the best tradition of engineering at Caltech, creating the interface between fundamental science advances and their realization through engineering for the benefit of society at large."

According to the United States Department of Energy, "transforming the way we generate, supply, transmit, store, and use energy will be one of the defining challenges for America and the globe in the 21st century. At its heart, the challenge is a scientific one. Important as they are, incremental advances in current energy technologies will not be sufficient. History has demonstrated that radically new technologies arise from disruptive advances at the science frontiers. The Energy Frontier Research Centers program aims to accelerate such transformative discovery." 

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, in announcing the awards, said, "Today, we are mobilizing some of our most talented scientists to join forces and pursue the discoveries and breakthroughs that will lay the foundation for our nation's energy future."