During the DPI Annual Meeting 2007, organised in Maastricht, DPI award three nominees for their thesis, published in the academic year 2006-2007.
The winner of the DPI Golden thesis award was Jan Anton Koster with his thesis: Device physics of donor/acceptor-blend solar cells.
In the competition for the DPI Golden Thesis Award 2007, seven candidates from four universities -also outside The Netherlands- were nominated by their supervisors. The jury (profs Dietrich Haarer, Tom McLeish and Thijs Michels) noticed that this year's quality was really high, both in scientific level (with well-cited publications in reputed journals) and technological relevance (with several reported inventions). The combination of the two led the jury to select for the two runner-up Awards:
Matthijs de Geus, with a thesis on "Enzymatic Catalysis in the Synthesis of New Polymer Architectures and Materials" (thesis supervisor prof. Cor Koning - TU/e)
and
Dirk-Jan Voorn, with a thesis on ".platelet nanocomposites particles. Encapsulation of platelets by physical and chemical approaches" (thesis supervisor prof. Alex van Herk - TU/e)
The winner of the Golden Thesis Award became, by unanimous decision:
Jan-Anton Koster, with a thesis on "Device physics of donor/acceptor-blend solar cells" (thesis supervisor prof. Paul Blom - RU Groningen).
This thesis dealt with a long list of standing questions in the highly competitive field of organic and hybrid solar cells, and authoritatively managed to answer many of them. In particular, it made a knowledge-based prediction on the maximum attainable efficiency in hybrid cells, thereby setting a clear goal for further research and development. The research results have also been published in an impressively long list of publications.
Thesis Jan Anton Koster: Device physics of donor/acceptor-blend solar cells
Harvesting energy directly from the Sun is a very attractive, but not an easy way of providing mankind with energy. Efficient, cheap, lightweight, flexible, and environmentally
friendly solar panels are very desirable. Conjugated polymers bear the potential of fulfilling these requisites. Due to their unique chemical makeup, these polymers can
be used as optoelectronically active materials, e.g., they can be optically excited and can transport charge carriers....
More information:http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/faculties/science/2007/l.j.a.koster/