Yuriy Smolin recently attended the 2014 ECS & SMEQ joint international meeting in Cancun, Mexico. The conferenced offered Yuriy the opportunity to showcase his novel research on energy storage and harvest devices. During the meeting, he presented two works. The first was entitled “oxidative chemical vapor deposition (oCVD) synthesis of ultrathin polythiophene films for enhanced charge storage in nanostructured devices.” Using oCVD as a polymerization and coating technique, Yuriy was able to show a 1.5x and 2.5x increase in specific and volumetric capacitance for carbon based supercapacitors. Ultra-thin films down to 5nm were deposited. The second talk, entitled “ICVD synthesis of polymer electrolytes for application in dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs),” was an invited talk where Yuriy showcased the facility of iCVD for the deposition of polymer electrolytes into mesoporous TiO2 photoanodes. Complete pore filling within the void spaces of the photoanodes up to 12 µm were observed—which has never been demonstrated before with polymers. Completed polymer-electrolyte solar cells showed 40% greater overall efficiency than liquid-based ones. Also, Yuriy illustrated how first principles mathematical modeling can be used to understand the effect of polymer chemistry on interfacial solar cell processes and overall performance.
Below: Early morning view of Cancun, Mexico during the international meeting.
