David Young is a senior scientist and group manager for the High Efficiency Crystalline PV group in the Chemistry and Nanoscience Department at NREL.

He received his PhD in applied physics from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, under the guidance of Professor Reuben Collins and Dr. Timothy Coutts. Since joining NREL, Young has worked on transport properties in transparent conducting oxides, developing the Method of Four Coefficients for measuring band structure in thin-film materials. He has also worked on thin-film tandem solar cells, epitaxial thin-film silicon solar cells, and high efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells with passivated contacts.

He helped to develop and patent a real-time quantum efficiency measurement system marketed under the name FlashQE™ and dynamic hydride vapor phase epitaxy (D-HVPE) for low-cost III-V materials.

Research Interests

• Passivated contacts to silicon solar cells
• Next-generation silicon solar cells
• Novel epitaxial liftoff techniques for III-V solar cells

Featured Work

Sanghyun Park, Simon J., Schulte K., Ptak A., Jung-Sub Wi, Young D. L, and Jihun Oh, “Germanium on Nothing for epitaxial liftoff of GaAs Solar Cells,” Joule 3, 1782-1793 (2019).

Simon J., Schulte K., Horowitz K., Remo T., Young D. L, and Ptak A., “III-V-Based Optoelectronics with Low-Cost Dynamic Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy,” Crystals 9, 3, (2019).

Young, D. L., Lee, B. G., Fogel, D., Nemeth, W., LaSalvia, V., Theingi, S., Page, M., Young, M., Perkins, C. and Stradins, P. “Gallium doped PolySi:Ga/SiO2 passivated emitters to n-Cz wafers with iVoc > 730 mV,” Journal of Photovoltaics 7, 1640-1645 (2017).

Essig, S., Allebé, C., Remo, T., Geisz, J. F., Steiner, M. A., Horowitz, K., Barraud, L., Ward, J. S., Schnabel, M., Descoeudres, A., Young, D. L., Woodhouse, M., Despeisse, M., Ballif, C. and Tamboli, A. “Raising the one-sun conversion efficiency of III–V/Si solar cells to 32.8% for two junctions and 35.9% for three junctions,”. Nature Energy 2, 17144, (2017).

Sweet, C., Schulte, K., Simon, J., Steiner, M., Jain, N., Young, D., Ptak, A. & Packard, C. E. "Controlled exfoliation of (100) GaAs-based devices by spalling fracture," Applied Physics Letters 108, 011906 (2016).

Young, D. L., Nemeth, W., LaSalvia, V., Page, M. R., Theingi, S., Aguiar, J., Lee, B. G. & Stradins, P. "Low-Cost Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation Doping for Interdigitated Back Passivated Contact (IBPC) Solar Cells," Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 158, 68-76 (2016).

Young, D. L., Nemeth, W., LaSalvia, V., Reedy, R., Essig, S., Bateman, N. & Stradins, P. "Interdigitated Back Passivated Contact (IBPC) Solar Cells formed by Ion Implantation," Journal of Photovoltaics 6, 41-47 (2016).