Institute of Sustainable Energy, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (@The National Energy University/UNITEN),
Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia
Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (@The National University of Malaysia/UKM), 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
Biography
Dr. Nowshad Amin is currently serving as a Professor at the Institute of Sustainable Energy of The National Energy University (@Universiti Tenaga Nasional) of Malaysia as well as an adjunct to Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). Earlier, he served over 11 years at the Dept. of Electrical, Electronic & Systems Engineering of The National University of Malaysia (@ Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) from Nov. 2006 till Jan. 2018, where he led the Solar Photovoltaic Research Group under the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI). After the higher secondary education with distinctions from his native country, Bangladesh, he received the Japanese Ministry of Education (MONBUSHO) scholarship in 1990. Accomplishing Japanese Language diploma in 1991, he achieved a diploma in Electrical Engineering (1994) from Gunma National College of Technology, Bachelor (1996) in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Toyohashi University of Technology, Masters (1998) and PhD (2001) on solar photovoltaic technology (Thin Film Solar Cell) from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo, Japan). Later, he pursued Postdoctoral fellowship in the USA and briefly worked at Motorola Japan Ltd. His areas of expertise include Microelectronics, Renewable Energy, Solar Photovoltaic Applications and Thin Film Solar PV Development. Additionally, his research focuses on the commercialization of Solar Photovoltaic Products from his patented entities, as such he also served as the CTO cum director of a University Spin-off company financed by the Malaysian Technology Development Center (MTDC). He served as a visiting professor to the King Saud University (KSU) in Saudi Arabia from 2010 till 2016. He has been involved as the project-leader as well as co-researcher of many government (Malaysia) and international (Saudi National Grant, Qatar Foundation etc.) funded projects. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, a few books and book chapters. He is actively involved in promoting Renewable Energy to the developing countries in South and South East Asia, working as an enthusiastic promoter for the affordable solar photovoltaic technologies.
Topic: Thin Film Photovoltaics: From Inception to successful Commercialization and Way Forward
Abstract: Undoubtedly, solar energy has emerged as one of the most cost-competitive solutions for alternative energy resource due to proven LCOE (levelized-cost-of-energy) in recent years. Solar cells have come across various generations after being demonstrated first at Bell Labs (6% in 1954) to today’s giga watt-peak solar farms with the utmost achievable conversion efficiencies (over 25%) for electrical power generation. It is not exaggerated to say we have replaced over 400 Nuclear Power Plants with over 400 GW of cumulative solar photovoltaic energy harvesting plants by the end of 2017. However, researchers around the world are still trying to find energy harvesting in the form of electricity with many kinds of solar cells starting from inorganic silicon based to organic based ones. Even though, the first generation solar cells that are mainly crystalline or multicrystalline silicon based ones are still dominating, the quest for other options brought us many other potential candidates such as amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride, copper-indium-suphide etc. since early 70s. Ever since the second generation solar cells came into the scenario, most of these are thin films based which require many supporting layers to form the complete cells in homo or hetero junction configurations but within a total thickness of 2-10 micron. Semiconductor material science including fabrication technology on many compound semiconductors has been evolving over the period of time to take them to commercialization stages whereas conversion efficiencies continue to mark over 20% till present (e.g. CIGS, CdTe, CZTS). This talk will include thin film solar cells from its inception in research arena toward successful commercialization till to date and current research topics. This will boost the hope of thin film PV as alternatives in the coming era of energy crisis.
Keywords: Solar Photovoltaics; Thin film solar cells; 3rd Generation PV