An inspirational science teacher sparked a career in solar energy.

Solar cells first caught my interest as a high school student, growing up in a small town in the Snowy Mountains of Australia. I was intrigued by the solar battery system that my physics teacher had installed, and I found that I had an affinity for the science of solar cells. I still find it amazing that you can stick a thin sliver of silicon out in the sun and generate electricity; it’s extraordinary.

Even when I went to university to study, solar cell technology was quite fringe. People didn’t really know about it. Today, it is a multibillion-dollar industry, the fastest growing deployed electricity-generation technology in the world that continues to grow at an extraordinary rate. I remember when solar energy was the most expensive way to generate electricity. Now, it is the cheapest, and the technology is still improving.

As a research scientist in Stefaan De Wolf’s lab at KAUST, my work is focused on an emerging technology called a tandem solar cell. We essentially make a silicon solar cell and then add another solar cell made of a semiconductor called perovskite on top of it. The perovskite absorbs blue light best while the silicon absorbs red light best. Combined, they can capture more of the energy in the sunlight than either cell can by working alone.

Read more at KAUST Insight.