Biography

Xinhui Lu is an associate professor in the Department of Physics, CUHK. She received her bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University and PhD degree from Yale University. Then, she worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory before joining CUHK. Her research interest lies in energy related material science, including morphology and device performance of organic and perovskite solar cell materials, bulk and surface structure of functional thin films and synchrotron x-ray scattering techniques. She is a council member of Physical Society of Hong Kong and Chinese Neutron Scattering Society, and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher 2020.

Learn to Fabricate High-performance Third-Generation Solar Cells with Grazing Incidence Scattering Techniques

Nowadays, solar industry becomes the fastest growing industry due to the rising demands to reduce carbon emission and to realize carbon neutrality by harvesting clean and abundant solar energy. Third-generation solar cells, such as organic and perovskite solar cells are all relying on a semiconducting thin-film active layer to harvest the solar energy. The microstructure within the active layer, in terms of crystal structure, orientation, grain size and nanophase separation degree, is known to be critical to the solar cell device performance.

Here, we will present our recent studies on the process-structure-device correlation of organic and perovskite solar cells. In these studies, state-of-art grazing incidence scattering techniques using X-rays and neutrons were employed for various purposes, such as grazing incidence wide-angle/small-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS/GISAXS), grazing incidence transmission small-angle X-ray scattering (GTSAXS), grazing incidence neutron scattering (GISANS). These techniques can also be applied in material science, chemistry, biology and condensed matter physics studies. By modifying the wavelength of the probing beam and the experimental geometry, a variety of sample types, such as solutions, powders, surfaces and thin films, can be studied, covering wide length scales as well as versatile dynamic and kinetic behaviours.