Vohra Varun

During the earlier stage of my research studies (Master course and PhD), I focused on host-guest compounds, either organic-organic (polyrotaxanes) or organic-inorganic (dye loaded zeolite L). My PhD work at Istituto per lo Studio delle Macromolecole (ISMAC-CNR, Italy) also included some other processes such as electrospinning of conjugated polymers and optical spectroscopy and microscopy to study the optical properties of the host-guest compounds in various environments. After the intial more chemistry oriented stage, I shifted a little towards process and physics. At the end of my PhD in Milano, I initiated fabricating organic electronics devices (OLED) and most of my experience as a post-doctoral fellow at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) was focused on understanding the basics of organic photovoltaics and increasing the efficiency of polymer solar cells. This experience at JAIST resulted in two world record efficiencies (at the time of publishing): the best performing graded bilayer solar cells and the best performing bulk heterojunction polymer single junction solar cells (manuscript under review). Furthermore, novel techniques for solar cells characterizations including elemental mapping of the cross-section to assess the donor-acceptor concentration gradient were introduced which have the potential to revolutionize the field of organic electronics.