Home Faculty Advisor: Professor Richard Friend, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge
Host Faculty Advisor: Professor Peidong Yang, Department of Chemistry, UC Berkeley
Aditya completed his Ph.D. in Physics in 2015 in Cambridge investigating photo-physical properties of hybrid perovskites using photothermal deflection spectroscopy (PDS). Prior to this, he completed a Masters in Nanoelectronics at the University of Manchester and a BEng at the University of Mumbai, India. His research on thin-film semiconductors has led to the understanding of the role of defects in semiconductors. Furthermore, his work on LEDs has produced the highest luminescence efficiency at the time for perovskite-based LEDs. Outside of his research, he is involved in outreach projects to propagate STEM education in schools situated in remote corners of India, UK, and Africa.
The advent of perovskite semiconductors has brought a paradigm shift in semiconductor science and technology opening up a unique set of opportunities to realize novel high performing optoelectronic applications. The magic of these polycrystalline thin-film perovskites is their demonstration of intrinsic semiconductor behavior, perfect clean characteristics and low disorder similar to those obtained in extremely purified single crystals of inorganic semiconductors. Aditya’s research at Berkeley is to synthesize and explore lead-free perovskite semiconductors based nanostructures like nano-crystals, nano-wires, and nano-platelets. There are various synthesis routes available for making this possible and Prof. Yang’s group has strong expertise on this front. Aditya’s extensive expertise in working with perovskite-based semiconductors will be deployed to studying their vastly varying photo-physical properties for applications including solar cells, LEDs and FETs.