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Project: ESR on Fabrication and testing of III-V/Si tandem solar cells

Stefano Soresi

Stefano is officially registered at the University of Montpellier 2 (Institut d’Electronique et des Systemes), but he will carry out his PhD studies at the III-V Lab in Palaiseau. The mission of III-V Lab is to perform research and development on III-V semiconductor components, and to demonstrate their integration with Si circuits and micro-systems, from basic research to technology transfer for industrialization, or to small scale and pilot line production.

III-V Lab takes advantage of the commonalities between the technologies developed for different markets addressed by Thales and Alcatel-Lucent, such as telecom, space, defense and security. III-V Lab has also the capacity to produce and sell components (epitaxial wafers, processed wafers, modules) in small quantities.

The purpose of Stefano’s PhD work is to fabricate multi-junction solar cells based on III-V compounds grown on Silicon substrates. This work will follow two parallel paths: on one side, InP- and GaAs-based monojunction (and later multijunction) solar cells will be grown by MOVPE and fabricated in the III-V Lab facilities. Optimized bandgap materials for photovoltaic applications as well as appropriate tunnel junctions will be studied in this work. On the other side, the specific regrowth conditions by MOVPE and/or GSMBE on the Sb-based templates provided by the University of Montpellier 2 will be studied extensively. During this PhD work, Stefano will also characterize the grown samples (XRD measurements, C-V profile, Hall effect measurements) and he will do the fabrication process of the solar cells with conventional clean-room technical processing.

He will be supervised by Jean Decobert for the whole duration of the project at III-V Lab, and his academic supervisor will be Dr. Eric Tournié from the University of Montpellier 2. He will also collaborate to the other III-V Lab photovoltaic related projects. Finally, he will attend some courses in different Universities of Paris and some seminars in France and Europe.

Stefano was born in Piacenza on November 3, 1991. He attended high school in Piacenza, obtaining the scientific baccalaureate diploma in 2010. During this period, he developed a strong interest in science subjects, in particular Physics.

Stefano studied Physics at the University of Parma, getting his Bachelor’s degree in 2013 and his Master’s degree in 2015. In those years he approached more and more experimental and applied Physics, because he considered this essential to see a practical application of his studies. In particular, during his last year in Parma, his interests were oriented on crystals and thin films growth techniques and on their application in photovoltaic.

Stefano had no particular work experiences in those years, except private lessons to middle school, high school and university students; thanks to which he learned how to interact with younger people and developed good predispositions to teaching.

Out of Physics and science his main personal interests are history, art history and cinema. He also enjoys reading (Marquez, Hemingway, McCarthy) and travelling, and he will try to visit at least one new European country every summer.

Mon 21 December 2015