The group has an Analytical Chemistry Summer Studentship available funded by the Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund on Radiation Damage Studies on Halide Perovskite Solar Cell Materials. The project will be hosted in the Department of Chemistry at UCL and Prajna Bhatt will lead this as the day-to-day supervisor.
The summer studentship aims to uncover the effect of X-ray irradiation on perovskite-related structures, at the forefront of research in photovoltaic and X-ray detection applications. It will focus on understanding radiation damage mechanisms and to develop mitigation strategies. The project will involve synthesis of powdered perovskite materials and their chemical state, composition and crystal structure will be characterised before and after in-situ irradiation by a combinative approach of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). These results will be correlated with similar work on single crystals of these materials in order to understand radiation damage in both single crystals as well as polycrystalline powders. We will use high-resolution laboratory-based soft XPS to collect core and valence band spectra and iterative measurements will be employed to explore radiation sensitivity of the materials and to limit radiation damage.
The summer studentship will run for eight weeks starting on 12th June and the student will receive a weekly stipend of £395.00 for the duration of the studentship.
If you are interested in this position, please contact Anna via email by the 1st of May 2023, including a CV and short statement on why you would like to get involved in this project.