(From right) Jackson Barp and Michael Stuckelberger (Credit: DESY)
Jackson Luis Barp Junior, a PhD student of the PETRA III group at DESY and Universität Hamburg, has won the highly coveted award for the best student paper in the area “Characterization Methods” of the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (IEEE PVSC) that took place in June 2024 in Seattle (Washington, USA).
Jackson Barp is a nanoscientist at DESY and is pursuing his PhD at Universität Hamburg (UHH). The topic of his award-wining presentation was “Assessing the local charge-carrier kinetics in buried structures through time-resolved X-ray beam induced voltage measurements”. In his presentation, he summarised his latest work on the development of a new X-ray microscopy technique – time-resolved X-ray beam induced voltage – and its application to evaluate the performance of solar cells.
“Our goal is to improve the efficiency of novel solar cells,” explains Jackson Barp. “Particularly thin-film solar cells with absorbers that are just few 1000th of a millimetre thick such as CdTe or perovskite solar cells are limited by spatial inhomogeneities and local defects. Hence, we map out the solar-cell performance with highest resolution to detect and characterise defects. Together with solar-cell manufacturers, we discuss then how to mitigate these defects and how to improve manufacturing processes.”
Michael Stuckelberger, supervisor of Barp’s PhD thesis together with Christian Schroer, is pleased: “The award is well deserved and confirms the excellence of Jackson Barp’s work. It also demonstrates a fruitful collaboration between DESY and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) near Chicago (USA) with its hard X-ray nanoprobe that is ideally adopted to time-resolved measurements with pulsed X-rays.”
Jackson Barp will defend his thesis 2024 but the project to evaluate electronic devices through time-resolved X-ray beam induced voltage continues: next, the method shall be extended towards power electronics devices. Finally, the new storage ring PETRA IV will not only enable much higher throughput, but the boosted brilliance will also give access to fast processes that are critical to understanding the performance of the device but are not accessible today.
