Axel Palmstrom is a staff scientist in the Interfacial and Surface Science Group at NREL. He received his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara and his doctorate in chemical engineering from Stanford University in the group of Professor Stacey Bent. His thesis work at Stanford focused on the development of ultrathin oxide layers by atomic layer deposition for novel thin-film solar cell architectures. Axel joined NREL as a postdoctoral researcher in 2018 where he studied interfaces, contacts, and barriers in metal halide perovskite devices. As a staff scientist, Axel is engaged with academic and industrial partners and conducts fundamental and applied research to atomic layer deposition and chemical vapor deposition growth techniques, semiconductor surfaces and interfaces, and thin-film characterization with specific interest in de-risking metal halide perovskite technologies.

Research Interests

Development, characterization, and innovation on thin-film growth techniques

Understanding the roles of surfaces, interfaces, and interfacial chemistry on solar cell performance and stability

Development of novel solar cell architectures

Education

Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Stanford University

B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara

Featured Work

Triple-Halide Wide-Band Gap Perovskites with Suppressed Phase Segregation for Efficient Tandems, Science (2020)

Reduced Self-Doping of Perovskites Induced by Short Annealing for Efficient Solar Modules, Joule (2020)

Enabling Flexible All-Perovskite Tandem Solar Cells, Joule (2019)

Carrier Lifetimes of >1μs in Sn-Pb Perovskites Enable Efficient All-Perovskite Tandem Solar Cells, Science (2019)

Bimolecular Additives Improve Wide-Band-Gap Perovskites for Efficient Tandem Solar Cells with CIGS, Joule (2019)

Interfacial Effects of Tin Oxide Atomic Layer Deposition in Metal Halide Perovskite Photovoltaics, Advanced Energy Materials (2018)

23.6%-Efficient <onolithic Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Solar Cells with Improved Stability, Nature Energy (2017)

Perovskite-Perovskite Tandem Photovoltaics with Optimized Band Gaps, Science (2016)

Atomic Layer Deposition in Nanostructured Photovoltaics: Tuning Optical, Electronic and Surface Properties, Nanoscale (2015)

Awards and Honors

R&D 100 Award (2020)