Spring is the time for the best research ideas; summer is the time for writing up the work; autumn is the time for peer-review and winter is time to reap the rewards. The bounty of the last few months:
- "Phase Stability of the Earth-Abundant Tin Sulfides SnS, SnS2, and Sn2S3" L. Burton and A. Walsh, Journal of Physical Chemistry C 116, 24262 (2012).
The first publication written by my first PhD student (an iconic moment). Lee has spent a year making sense of both experiment and theory of tin sulfides towards applications in solar cells. One of his early findings was that the recently reported zinc-blende phase cannot exist (based on thermodynamic, crystallographic, computational and chemical grounds).
- “Abundance of CuZn+SnZn and 2CuZn+SnZn defect clusters in kesterite solar cells" S. Chen, L. Wang, A. Walsh, X. G. Gong and S.-H. Wei, Applied Physics Letters 101, 223901 (2012).
Attending the recent European Kesterite Workshop was inspiring: many groups across the continent working towards the common goal of low cost and sustainable solar energy. The defect chemistry of the quaternary semiconductor Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) is epic; in the latest chapter we have identified a number of defect complexes that are likely to impact the performance in CZTS solar cells.
- "Electronic structure of CuCrO2 thin films grown on Al2O3(001) by oxygen plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy" D. Shin, J. S. Foord, R. G. Egdell and A. Walsh, Journal of Applied Physics 112, 113718 (2012).
When my long-time collaborator Russ Egdell visited Bath for a seminar last summer, we sat down to discuss our on-going projects. One issue he had was understanding why the material CuCrO2 adopted a peculiar orientation (015) when grown on Al2O3 substrates. With the aid of crystal structure visualisation and a few back-of-the-envelope calculations we were able to explain it in a few hours. This nice paper is the result!
- “Thermodynamic and electronic properties of tunable II-VI and IV-VI semiconductor based metal-organic frameworks from computational chemistry” C. H. Hendon, D. Tiana, T. P. Vaid and A. Walsh, Journal of Materials Chemistry C 1, 95 (2013).
The first publication written by my second PhD student (another iconic moment). A first step towards systematically tuning the electronic properties of metal organic frameworks. From screening 24 compounds, five potential hybrid semiconductors were identified.