{"id":18,"date":"2017-05-02T22:49:01","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T22:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/?p=18"},"modified":"2017-08-08T19:20:26","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T19:20:26","slug":"bright-light-renewable-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/bright-light-renewable-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bright Light in Renewable Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Look around many neighborhoods<\/strong>, especially in California, and it can seem as if solar panels are popping up on nearly every rooftop. However, in reality photovoltaic (PV) cells that convert sunlight directly into power for residences, commercial properties and utility-scale solar fields generate just one percent of all electricity in the United States. And that\u2019s after rapid year-to-year growth over the past decade, including a record number of PV solar installations in 2016. To reduce the use of fossil fuels and the impacts of climate change, says Adele Tamboli \u201904, the technology will need to become far more prevalent.<\/p>\n

Tamboli, a scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and research assistant professor at the Colorado School of Mines, is working to make that expansion feasible. She\u2019s focused on improving the efficiency of PV cells through materials science, the field in which she earned a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n

Lowering costs and boosting performance are essential to advancing PV technology. Tamboli explains, \u201cNinety percent of the market right now is in crystalline silicon, the same material used in computers. It\u2019s not a good light absorber, and making it at a high-enough quality requires expensive high-temperature processing and complicated equipment. For me, the big issue is that the silicon photovoltaic market has high capital expenditures. To address climate change, we have to come up with a technology that can be scaled more quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tamboli<\/a>
Tamboli uses a combinatorial sputtering chamber in her search for new material compositions.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In response to these needs, Tamboli is exploring how to get more power out of the existing silicon technology. Her effort to improve silicon\u2019s performance involves layering two different solar cells\u2014one high voltage, the other lower\u2014to find better ways to efficiently capture light.<\/p>\n

She is also looking for new semiconductor materials with the potential to replace silicon entirely. This research into inexpensive silicon alternatives with greater light absorbency is already proving fruitful: Tamboli has identified multiple new materials that show promise for solar applications and perhaps others as well, including lasers and optical computing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key question is whether we have found an under-explored set of semiconductors that is tunable in new ways that we haven\u2019t traditionally used,\u201d says Tamboli. \u201cOne really interesting thing is that two of these materials, zinc silicon phosphide (ZnSiP2) and zinc germanium phosphide (ZnGeP2), can be grown on silicon, so they potentially could be integrated with silicon PV in a multi-junction solar cell architecture. We could then control the degree of disorder to get exactly the properties we want.\u201d<\/p>\n

This investigation into promising new materials has attracted attention well beyond her lab. In 2016, Tamboli became part of a select group of scientists to be awarded significant support from the Department of Energy\u2019s Early Career Research Program. Her project is one of just 49 chosen from among 720 research proposals to receive five years of funding.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unsurprising that Tamboli is making her mark at a relatively early stage of her career. The Harvey Mudd physics graduate also came to the field of research early, starting at the Los Alamos National Laboratory the summer after her first year of college.<\/p>\n

I always wanted to do science that has an impact on the world. That\u2019s why getting into renewable energy was a good fit for me. I decided it was a problem that needed to be solved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013ADELE TAMBOLI ’04<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s somewhat unusual to get research experience so early in college, but I got lucky and was offered a job. I had some programming experience, and they liked that. I was debating about being a computer science major at that point\u2014I had a hard time figuring out a major at Mudd because I liked everything\u2014but I decided sitting in front of a computer all day wasn\u2019t for me,\u201d Tamboli recalls. \u201cI enjoyed the days I could go into the lab and see my code being used. That\u2019s what got me interested in experimental research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back on campus, Tamboli became an undergraduate researcher working on magnetic materials with physics professors James Eckert and Patricia Sparks. They encouraged her to attend research conferences and to interact with other scientists, and they stimulated her interest in materials science.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always wanted to do science that has an impact on the world. That\u2019s why getting into renewable energy was a good fit for me. I decided it was a problem that needed to be solved,\u201d says Tamboli, who began directing her attention to renewable energy after graduate school. \u201cI did a postdoc working on materials for artificial photosynthesis, which taught me a lot about the same materials I work on now.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she tackles her current projects, Tamboli is buoyed by the potential she sees for renewable energy and for solar power in particular. \u201cI think high-efficiency solar architectures will take over,\u201d she says. \u201cI also think we\u2019ll see more distributed solar because the ability to have PV everywhere will give us more options other than individual, residential rooftop applications. Another thing is the expansion of PV in the developing world. We don\u2019t need new technology for that\u2014we just need to put it out there. It\u2019s starting to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, Tamboli is focused on further breakthroughs and innovations in her ongoing projects, working with a research team that has included Mudd undergraduates and alumni. She says, \u201cScience is uncertain and risky. But I try to choose things with the most impact and highest likelihood of success. And even if my particular project doesn\u2019t succeed, the person sitting two doors down from me who\u2019s working toward the same goal might.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look around many neighborhoods, especially in California, and it can seem as if solar panels are popping up on nearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}