Columbia University

The Columbia University Keck team proposes to develop a fundamentally new type of energy conversion process, one in which a single absorbed photon creates two or more electronic excitations in a suitable nanostructured material. The physics of this process will be carefully studied and optimized, through control of nanostructure design, by an interdisciplinary team with expertise in chemistry, physics and engineering. This program will build and electrically characterize individual nanoscale photovoltaic devices based on semiconductor nanocrystals and carbon nanotubes. This project has the potential to dramatically improve both basic understanding of non-traditional energy conversion processes and the practical production of electricity and fuels from sunlight.