Yang Yang: Perovskites and tandem solar cells promise to increase efficiency, lower costs
New materials and new cell designs point to a bright future for solar.
Yang Yang is the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas, Jr., Chair in Engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.
His lab studies devices including photovoltaic cells, digital memory units, light-emitting diodes and thin film transistors. Various kinds of materials are used, including conjugate polymers, carbon based nanomaterials, as well as solution processable inorganic semiconductors, to pursue the highest performance based on a thin film made at extremely low cost.
Yang's work has led to the invention of the inverted organic solar cells, the invention of transparent organic photovoltaic devices and greater understanding of polymer morphology and its influence on device performance. Along with fellow researchers, his lab has helped set several world records for power conversion efficiency in solar devices. His recent research includes development of perovskite solar cells and photodetectors.
Yang joined the UCLA faculty in 1997, and has more than 60 patents and more than 290 peer-reviewed papers. He received his Ph.D. in physics and applied physics from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is a Fellow of SPIE, as well as several other organizations. In January 2016, he was named one of "the world's most influential scientific minds" by Thomson Reuters IP & Science, based on an assessment of research papers and citations published by thousands of researchers between 2003 and 2013.
