The researcher Miguel Anaya has obtained the Extraordinary Thesis Award in the category of Science and Technology of New Materials for his research that he defended in the 2017/2018 academic year.
Miguel completed his thesis under the direction of Hernán Míguez and Mauricio Calvo at the MOM Group (Multifunctional Optical Materials Group), at the Institute of Materials Science in Seville. In it, he investigated the optical properties of metal halide perovskites, a material that, although previously known, regained a lot of interest due to its enormous potential to revolutionize the field of photovoltaics, LEDs and photodetectors, among other optoelectronic devices.
In their thesis, they made seminal studies on their optical response and how it is influenced by conditions as varied as the type of light with which they are stimulated or the atmosphere in which these materials are immersed. Thanks to this knowledge, they proposed optical models and designed optimal architectures for standard solar cells such as tandem architecture where efficiency is maximized thanks to an ideal control of light absorption and its conversion to electric current. At the same time, in Miguel’s thesis they proposed a new type of photonic structure, with which they demonstrated for the first time perovskite solar cells with structural color, an important milestone in the field. Finally, their experience with perovskites and with porous materials in general led them to propose a new method to quantumly confine perovskite without the need for ligands, while making them much more stable against any external stimulus.
During the realization and research of his thesis, Miguel tells us that he enjoyed it a lot and remembers it as a very happy time. He thanks his directors for giving him and the entire group so much freedom, the ICMS and cicCartuja for creating the right environment to make science interesting while he was able to enjoy his youth. Finally, he thanks his collaborators for their support, especially those at Oxford (Prof Snaith), EPFL (Prof Hagfeldt), Jaume I (Prof Mora) and Georgia Tech (Ass Prof Correa-Baena). Finally, he makes a special mention of the Fundación la Caixa, which provided funding, as did the US and the CSIC.
Miguel Anaya at the MOM