Bryon Larson earned his doctorate in inorganic chemistry from Colorado State University under the supervision of Professors Steven H. Strauss and Garry Rumbles (NREL). His research focused on the synthesis, purification, and characterization of libraries of fullerene derivatives for fundamental and applied organic photovoltaics (PV) investigations. As a postdoctoral researcher with Nikos Kopidakis at NREL, he studied how certain molecular properties in PV-relevant compounds and polymers are expressed as bulk properties in a working device, by combining his training in chemistry, spectroscopy, and device physics.
He currently studies photoinduced charge carrier generation, transport, and decay dynamics in emergent thin-film and flexible PV materials, including organic semiconductors, metal-halide perovskites, and novel organometallic absorbers. In addition to spectroscopic characterization, his research includes solution-phase processing, solar cell fabrication, device physics, chemical analysis, X-ray crystallography, and material design to qualify and predict next-gen champion PV materials. His work also includes metrology solutions and scaling techniques for roll-to-roll manufacturing of photovoltaic modules. These efforts are supported through research grants from the Solar Energy Technology Office, Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, and Basic Energy Sciences within the U.S. Department of Energy as well as through industry partnerships.
Research Interests
Structure property functions in emergent PV materials
Photoinduced dynamics of molecules, polymers, and coordination complexes
Roll-to-roll PV module manufacturing and metrology
Gigahertz probe spectroscopies
Crystal engineering in functional organometallic solids
Education
Ph.D. Inorganic Chemistry, Colorado State University
B.S. Chemistry, Centenary College of Louisiana
B.A. French Literature, Centenary College of Louisiana
Featured Work
Surface Lattice Engineering through Three-Dimensional Lead Iodide Perovskitoid for High-Performance Perovskite Solar Cells, Chem. (2021)
Single-Layered Organic Photovoltaics with Double Cascading Charge Transport Pathways: 18% Efficiencies, Nature Communications (2021)
Beyond Strain: Controlling the Surface Chemistry of CsPbI3 Nanocrystal Films for Improved Stability against Ambient Reactive Oxygen Species, Chemistry of Materials (2020)
Improving Efficiency and Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells Enabled by A Near-Infrared-Absorbing Moisture Barrier, Joule (2020)
Efficient, Stable Silicon Tandem Cells Enabled by Anion-Engineered Wide-Bandgap Perovskites, Science (2020)
Triple-Halide Wide–Band Gap Perovskites with Suppressed Phase Segregation for Efficient Tandems, Science (2020)
High Efficiency Perovskite Quantum Dot Solar Cells with Charge Separating Heterostructure, Nature Communications (2019)
Enhanced Charge Transport in 2D Perovskites via Fluorination of Organic Cation, Journal of the American Chemical Society (2019)
Inter‐Fullerene Electronic Coupling Controls the Efficiency of Photoinduced Charge Generation in Organic Bulk Heterojunctions, Advanced Energy Materials (2016)
Tuning the Driving Force for Exciton Dissociation in Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Heterojunctions, Nature Chemistry (2016)
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