University of Groningen
Device physics of colloidal quantum dot solar cells Speirs, Mark Jonathan
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Publication date: 2017
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Speirs, M. J. (2017). Device physics of colloidal quantum dot solar cells. University of Groningen.
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Acknowlegdements
With this final section, four years of work come to an end. This work was not done in isolation, but took place with the help of many people. My thanks go to everyone who has contributed in any way to this thesis. There are so many in fact that not all can be mentioned by name. However, I wish to mention a number of people without whom this thesis as it is now would not have been possible.
First of all I would like to thank my promoter Maria. Thank you for taking me into your research group, initially as a master student, and then as a PhD student. I appreciated your guidance, helpful discussions, and your many pragmatic suggestions. I am also very grateful for the amount of nice conferences and places I was allowed to go to! Thank you for your moral support during the difficult periods and for having faith in me. I have learnt a lot in the past four years and have greatly enjoyed my time in your group.
I wouldn’t have started my PhD if I hadn’t had a good experience during my master research project, for which I am grateful to my supervisor Kristina Szendrei. You taught me a lot about making solar cells and how to work effectively in the lab. It wasn’t always an easy project, but the fact that I look back upon it with nice memories is due to your encouragement and optimism, and eventually we were rewarded by a very nice paper as a result.
A PhD in experimental physics costs a lot of money, and I would like to thank the Ubbo Emmius Fund and all members of the alumni chapter Den Haag/Rotterdam for their financial contribution to my project, and also to Tienke and Sandy for organizing the chapter meetings; I had fun giving pre-sentations in some very interesting locations.
Next I would like to thank our collaborators in ETH Zürich who partnered with us in our research and supplied us with new and high quality materi-als. Thank you prof. Dr. Maksym Kovalenko, dr. Loredana Protesescu, dr.
Acknowlegdements
Dmitry Dirin, and Laura Piveteau for synthesizing great little quantum dots. You were always very fast when we asked for a new batch of quantum dots, and your materials allowed us to do cutting edge science together. I wish you all the best in your future research!
I would like to thank my reading committee, prof. Ted Sargent, prof. Albert Polman, and prof. Hummelen for taking the time to read my thesis and provide very useful expertise in their feedback.
During my PhD I was happy to supervise Bart Groeneveld in his master research project. Bart, you were a great help during my first project on tandem solar cells and I enjoyed working with you very much. Despite the challenges you faced and a difficult processing requirements, you maintained a great attitude in the lab and I’m glad you went on to do a PhD. I’m sure you will have great success.
I would not have been able to carry out experiments these past years with-out the help of our amazing technicians Arjen Kamp, Reinder Gooijaarts, Jan Harkema and Teodor Zaharia. Arjen, you were always ready to help me even though you were very busy, and I greatly appreciate all the things you did to keep things running smoothly. I also really enjoyed our lunch discussions about the craziest of topics, and your rants about university politics. Teodore, you only joined in the last few months of my PhD but you were immediately an asset to the group; not only for your technical support, but also for your enjoyable company.
I worked together with many great colleagues. Daniel, Vlad, Artem, Jorge, and Simon, we all started at roughly the same time and had a lot of fun together. I always enjoyed hanging out with you guys and it’s been great to see all of you become mature scientists.
Daniel, we were officemates from the beginning. I couldn’t have done without your chemistry knowledge sitting behind me and your transistor mea-surements were always a valuable addition to our papers.
Lai-Hung, thank you for all the scientific discussions. I really learnt a lot of device physics from you!
Hong-Hua and Musty, thank you for all the PL measurements you guys did!
Then, in the last couple of months of my PhD, I was happy to have some-one to work with on the same topic. Natasha, I see that you have immense perseverance and I’m sure you will be very successful!
To all the other members of the group that I would like to thank
Acknowlegdements
ally but can’t, Jan Anton, Sampson, Widi, Marianna, Gert-Jan, Insan, Shuyan, Satria, Dima, Wytse, Tejas, Davide, Solmaz, Niels, Jian, Nutifafa, Vincent, and Azadeh, thank you all for a very pleasant working environment and your help. Also a big thank you to Renate for taking care of all the administrative tasks and for always being cheerful and friendly.
A special thank you to my two paranymphs Arjan and Simon. Arjan, even though we did our PhD’s in different faculties, it was nice to be able to share the experience with a good friend on a parallel track to mine. Our time together in Groningen has been very valuable to me and I hope that wherever we all end up, we’ll stay close friends. Simon, I really respect your principles and your professional attitude in the workplace. I greatly enjoyed travelling with you to Lille and California and I wish you all the best with your PhD and career afterwards!
I would not have been able to get to this point in life without the constant love and support from my family. Mom, you sacrificed so much to give me the best opportunities in life. I am eternally grateful for all you have done! Jenny, thank you for always taking care of me and for all the things you taught me.
In the end, my proudest achievement of the past four years was not a result obtained in the lab, but finding my lovely wife! Meredith, thank you for your love, for challenging me, and for investing so much in me. Thank you for encouraging me throughout my PhD and for being interested in my work. Your love, prayers, and support have meant the world to me!
