Research
The LENS Lab develops semiconductor optoelectronic devices for energy and light technologies. Our approach integrates materials discovery, thin-film fabrication, multimodal characterisation, and device physics to build and understand multilayer optoelectronic platforms.
We pursue three interconnected research directions — building the fabrication and characterisation infrastructure to study new materials, developing high-performance multilayer optoelectronic devices, and extending these platforms toward solar fuels and emerging device applications.
Fabrication Platforms and Functional Materials
Advancing multilayer optoelectronic devices requires not only new materials but also the platforms to study and optimise them systematically. We develop integrated thin-film fabrication and multimodal characterisation workflows — combining solution processing, vacuum deposition, and a range of structural, optical, and electronic characterisation techniques — to establish rigorous quality-control methods and understand intrinsic material properties.
A key objective is high-throughput fabrication and characterisation of perovskite and related semiconductor thin films, enabling systematic exploration of composition, processing, and interface design across a wide parameter space. These platforms support both materials discovery and the translation of laboratory findings into reproducible, scalable device processes.
Multilayer Solar Cells, LEDs, and Photodetectors
Perovskite semiconductors offer broad bandgap tunability and high defect tolerance, making them compelling candidates for monolithically stacked multilayer device architectures. In photovoltaics, multijunction stacks can capture more of the solar spectrum than single-junction devices, with efficiency potentials that exceed fundamental single-junction limits.
We work on understanding and eliminating the energetic and optical losses that limit real-world performance in these architectures — including recombination at interfaces, compositional disorder in wide-bandgap absorbers, and optical losses in multilayer stacks. The same materials and device design principles extend naturally to vertically stacked perovskite photodetectors and light-emitting devices, where multilayer architectures enable wavelength selectivity and spectral tunability not achievable in single-layer devices.
Solar Fuels and Novel Optoelectronic Devices
High-voltage perovskite multijunction devices generate sufficient photovoltage to drive electrochemical reactions directly — splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, or reducing carbon dioxide into chemical fuels, using only sunlight as the energy input. We study the performance, stability, and integration of all-perovskite tandem devices coupled to electrochemical systems, addressing the materials and interface challenges that arise at the boundary between photovoltaics and electrochemistry.
Beyond solar fuels, we are interested in emerging optoelectronic device platforms enabled by the same multilayer design principles — including novel semiconductor materials, multifunctional devices, and applications where precise control of light–matter interactions opens new possibilities.
Laboratory Facilities
The LENS Lab is being established at SCUT with a dedicated infrastructure for multijunction perovskite device research — including a multi-glovebox fabrication suite, vacuum deposition systems, current-voltage and stability testing, and access to the full shared characterisation infrastructure of the State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices (SKLLMD).