Ohio State Awarded Third Frontier Funding for Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization

ORISadmin Faculty Awards, General, Grants

On December 15, 2006 the Ohio Third Frontier program announced the award for the new Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization (PVIC).

This new center will include two major hubs of photovoltaic (solar cell) research, development, and commercialization activities located at the University of Toledo and The Ohio State University. PVIC activities will involve the efforts of over twenty Ohio industrial and not-for-profit partners, including the Battelle Memorial Institute, Bowling Green State University, the Edison Materials Technology Center, and Green Energy Ohio.

Professor Robert Collins of the University of Toledo and Dr. Robert J. Davis of The Ohio State University will be the center Co-Directors. The $18.3 million budget for the center includes approximately $6.8 million for OSU over three years to fund research, development, and commercialization activities in advanced photovoltaic materials, devices, and systems in the College of Engineering and the College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

Specific materials systems to be investigated as part of the research portion of the proposal include novel organic-based photovoltaic materials, multi-junction III-V compound semiconductor devices, thermophotovoltaic materials and devices, and quantum dot structures. A major capital acquisition as part of the proposed work is a metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MO-CVD) tool that will be installed at the Nanotech West Laboratory on West Campus, but the proposal also includes other significant capital equipment acquisitions that will benefit the OSU advanced materials community.

For more information about the Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization, contact Co-Director Bob Davis at davis.2316@osu.edu.