dr declan hughes
Research Assistant, Organic Photovoltaics and Perovskites Research Team
Declan is a research assistant in Dr Wing Chung Tsoi‘s group looking at the stability and performance of perovskite solar cells under mimic aerospace applications. The two main areas of interest are stratospheric conditions, which is related to HAPS applications e.g. Airbus Zephyr, and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) conditions.
Declan’s main focus within these two fields is the thermal stability of perovskite devices under cold and hot temperatures (-100 to +85 °C) and the radiation hardness of perovskite devices, with the current 150 keV proton stability record being the carbon stack made here at SPECIFIC. Additionally, Declan is also looking the X-ray stability of Perovskite solar cells in collaboration with Singleton Hospital, and at new encapsulation techniques to reduce device weight and maximise the specific power (power-to-weight ratio).
Before starting his PhD, Declan completed his masters in physics (MPhys) in which he looked at the use of ADS/CFT to couple gravity with QED and link the hawking temperature of a black hole to the superconducting phase transition temperature.
Areas of Interest
- Radiation bombardment
- Thermal stability measurements
- Humidity stability measurements
- Raman Spectroscopy mapping
- Photoluminescence Spectroscopy mapping
- Photocurrent mapping
- Electroluminescence mapping
- Encapsulation techniques
- EQE
- Python coding and simulation