Home Faculty Advisor: Professor Richard Friend, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge
Host Faculty Advisor: Professor Eli Yablonovitch, Department of Electrical Engineering, UC Berkeley
Luis studied Physics on an exchange program that included the University of Salamanca, University of Santiago de Compostela and the University of Bristol. He then went on to complete a Masters and Ph.D. in Physics as part of the Nanotechnology doctoral training center, the University of Cambridge where he studied light and electron propagation in perovskite solar cells.
The project aims to develop a thermophotonic based device for cooling which can have applications in areas such as vaccine transport. The device combines an LED with a solar cell inside an insulated container, based on the concept developed by Professor Yablonovitch. The LED cools itself in the process of light emission and illuminates the solar cell which, in turn, recharges the battery. In this process, heat is transferred from the LED attached to the side to be cooled to the solar cell in the form of light and is dissipated into the atmosphere. Luis subsequently was awarded a Heising-Simons Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Berkeley to continue his research on developing a thermophotonic bottle for vaccine delivery and a related project on thermophotovoltaic devices that transform heat into electricity, using light as the heat transfer medium.