, Nobel Laureate, professor and president of the St. Petersburg Academic University of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Viacheslav M. Andreev, professor and head of the laboratory of the A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, will receive the 2013 Karl B?er Solar Energy Medal of Merit during a ceremony to be held on September 20, at the University of Delaware's Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory (ISE Lab) in Newark, MD, USA.
The medal and a cash award of $60,000, funded by the Karl W B?er Solar Energy Medal of Merit Trust, is presented every two years to individuals who have made significant pioneering contributions to the promotion of solar energy as an alternate source of energy through research, development or economic enterprise or otherwise promoted solar energy.
The award is given in honor of Karl Wolfgang B?er, a longtime University of Delaware faculty member, founder of UD's Institute of Energy Conversion and a distinguished scientist in the field of solar cells.
George C. Hadjipanayis, executive director of the Karl B?er Trust and the Richard B. Murray Professor of Physics and Astronomy, explained that the award is being given to Alferov and Andreev "for their pioneering work in the design of new solar cells and concentrator modules based on III-V semiconductor compounds with superior efficiencies and increased lifetime."
The recipient of the award is chosen by a panel of commissioners composed of scientists and presidents of several solar energy-related professional societies, a representative from the U.S. Department of Energy, a past recipient of this award, and a member of the B?er family.
Track record
The scientific activity of this year's winners has been focused for more than 40 years on research and development of III-V semiconductor heterostructures; combining group III elements such as aluminum, gallium and indium with group V elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus and arsenic specifically to improve solar cells. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the pair carried out multifaceted investigations in the field of semiconductor device technology and physics, based on heterojunctions, or semiconductor interfaces.
They developed what are considered the ideal aluminum gallium arsenide/gallium arsenide (AlGaAs/GaAs) lattice matched heterojunctions, allowing for the proposal and realization of a number of semiconductor devices, including: high-voltage and high-temperature rectifiers for power electronics; heterolasers; powerful light-emitting diodes in the visible and infrared spectrum regions; radiation detectors; and solar cells for space and terrestrial application.
Hadjipanayis added, "While the majority of solar cells are made from silicon, Alferov and Andreev were ahead of their time in working with the III-V semiconductor compounds, which demonstrated greater performance and opened the door to increased efficiency in solar cells and arrays."
The improvements were put into practice in the 1970s as the new solar cells were used to equip the Soviet Mir space station. Subsequent years saw further modifications of the solar cells, with the researchers improving the radiation tolerance and almost doubling the lifetime of space solar cells.
Their developments in solar energy systems resulted in wide international cooperation with organizations including the Instituto de Energia Solar in Madrid, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg, NASA's Glenn Research Center and the Toyota Technological Institute.
