Yifan Dong joined NREL as a postdoctoral researcher in 2022 to work with Matt Beard. Her research focuses on using ultrafast spectroscopy to understand the photophysics of perovskite materials and other emerging light-harvesting materials. She is particularly interested in studying light-matter interactions and structure-property relationships to elucidate design principles that will facilitate technological development.  

Prior to NREL, Yifan earned her doctorate in 2021 from Imperial College London under the supervision of Professor James Durrant and Artem Bakulin to investigate charge generation and recombination dynamics in non-fullerene based homojunction and heterojunction organic photovoltaics using ultrafast spectroscopy.   

Research Interests

Femtosecond to microsecond spectroscopy including:

• Transient absorption/reflection spectroscopy
• Terahertz spectroscopy
• Time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy
• Time-resolved microwave conductivity  

Charge and quasiparticle dynamics 

Charge transfer and transport

Optoelectronics properties of perovskite and other emerging light-harvesting materials

Education

Ph.D., Physical Chemistry, Centre for Processable Electronics, Imperial College London

M.S., Nanomaterials, Imperial College London

B.S., Chemistry, Imperial College London 

Professional Experience

Research Associate, Imperial College London (2021–2022)

Graduate Teaching Assistant, Imperial College London (2016–2020)

Associations and Memberships

Member, American Chemical Society

Member, Royal Society of Chemistry

Registered Scientist, Science Council

Featured Work

Correlating Charge-Transfer State Lifetimes with Material Energetics in Polymer:Non-Fullerene Acceptor Organic Solar Cells, J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2021)

Orientation Dependent Molecular Electrostatics Drives Efficient Charge Generation in Homojunction Organic Solar Cells, Nature Communications (2020)

Field Effect versus Driving Force: Charge Generation in Small-Molecule Organic Solar Cells, Advanced Energy Materials (2020)

The Binding Energy and Dynamics of Charge-Transfer States in Organic Photovoltaics with Low Driving force for Charge Separation, J.Chem.Phys. (2019)

Generation of Long-Lived Charges in Organic Semiconductor Heterojunction Nanoparticles for Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution, Nature Energy (2022) 

A Comparison of Charge Carrier Dynamics in Organic and Perovskite Solar Cells, Advanced Materials (2021)

Spectroscopic Investigation of the Effect of Microstructure and Energetic Offset on the Nature of Interfacial Charge Transfer States in Polymer: Fullerene Blends, J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2019)