Dr. Hari Upadhyaya is Senior Lecturer in Photovolaics Thin Films, and leads the Thin Film and Excitonic PV group at CREST, within the department. With his past experience in thin film PV for around 20 years, he has established the low cost (non-vacuum) and conventional (vacuum based) thin-film materials and photovoltaic device processing research and characterisation facilities at new PV laboratory at CREST. His research involves activities on Transparent Conducting Oxides (TCOs), Dye Solar Cell (DSC), CdTe and CIGS thin film solar cell technologies.
In collaboration with Prof. Michael Gratzel (EPFL, Switzerland) he had established over ~15% efficient record Dye/CIGS Tandem Solar Cells, which is highest for thin film based tandem solar cells. He has also potential links with companies like Johnson Matthey, Solaronix SA, Ove Arup, SVS Ltd, DuPont Teijin, Applied Multilayers, Solar Century and Pilkington Group.
He is involved in managing four Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) research projects and represents Loughborough in the Management Board of Excitonic Supergen consortium involving more than ten top Universities in UK.
His research interests, apart from mentioned activities, also include development of stable, low cost and large area and efficient organic and hybrid solar cells including quantum dot solar cells.
Expertise
Advanced glazing systems
thermal insulation and photovoltaic facades
Cold atmospheric plasmas physics and engineering
Energy use in the Built Environment
Engineering management
Ion and plasma sources
Methods of surface and thin film analysis
Plasma surface modification
Semi-transparent bifacial thin film photovoltaics for double glazed windows
Surface analysis techniques for thin film characterization
Thin film photovoltaics
Transparent conducting oxides
Keywords
Thin Film Photovoltaics
Excitonic Solar Cells
Low cost CIGS solar cells
Low cost CdTe solar cells
High mobility TCO
ion conducting polymers
Electron conducting polymers
Supercapacitors
Dr. Hari Upadhyaya has a Ph.D. degree in Physics, obtained from BHU (India) in 1992 on the work related to semiconductor junction devices with emphasis on solar cells and semiconductor memory devices. He was Sr. Lecturer (NERIST, India) prior to his arrival in UK in year 2002 under Royal Society Fellowship at Imperial College with Prof. James Durrant, where he established himself an expert in flexible Dye Solar Cell technology. Dr. Upadhyaya had led DST funded projects in India as PI and Co-PI and apart from energy generation with PV technologies, he had his keen interest also in the energy storage and power sources viz. Sodium rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors.
He moved later at CREST in June 2005 and worked with Prof. Ayodhya Tiwari (now EMPA, Switzerland) towards building the Photovoltaics Laboratory at Holywell Park which is one of the largest PV facilities in UK. He was leading in setting up the processing facilities on conventional vacuum based and low cost thin film CdTe and CIGS technologies, including ow cost Dye-sensitised Solar Cell (DSC) fabrication facilities and high mobility TCOs.
Dr. Upadhyaya is an expert in vacuum and non -vacuum related thin film processing technologies viz. sputtering, evaporation, spray pyrolysis, electrodeposition, chemical bath deposition. He has sound knowledge of various electrical, spectroscopic and structural characterisation of semiconducting materials and the junction device interface (solid -solid, solid-polymer and solid-liquid interfaces) including Impedance Spectroscopy technique.
Dr Upadhyaya had been involved in organisation of conferences and meetings at national and international level. He has contributed towards editing journals, co-authoring a CRC Handbook chapter on ‘Thin Film PV technologies’ and a consultancy report for Solar Century. Besides, he has contributed in around 40 research publications in variety of journals peer reviewed conference proceedings with good citation and with more than 20 oral/ invited talks in high profile conferences.
Dr. Hari Upadhyaya is currently involved in managing four National projects (UK) that are funded by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as follows:
(i) TSB-EPSRC project on the development of pilot in-line system for high performance CIGS solar cells (PI at Loughborough with SVS Ltd.)
(ii) TSB-EPSRC project on Low cost integrated window PV using bifacial CdTe solar cells (PI at Loughborough with Arup, Pilkington Group and applied Multilayers)
(iii) TSB funded ‘Low cost interconnects for CdTe solar cell modules’ (Co-PI at Loughborough with M-Solv) and
(iv) an EPSRC -Excitonic Supergen plus project on ‘Tandem concepts for high efficiency solar cells’ with a particular emphasis on TCO development (Co-PI at Loughborough with Oxford University-Co-I, and Warwick University -PI)
Currently he is supervising five PhD students on various aspects of Thin Film PV research that involves Dye-sensitised Solar Cells, new TCO developments and modelling, low cost thin film CIGS, and materials and interface characterisation of thin films solar cells.
Membership affiliation:
1. Member of institute of Physics (IoP) , UK
2. Life member, Indian Physics Association, India
3. Life member, Semiconductor Society of India, India
Dr. Upadhyaya is the responsible examiner for the Solar-2 module which is the part of the MSc in Renewable Energy Systems Technology and European Masters in Renewable Energy, which has regular and distance learning components.
Dr. Upadhyaya is also one of the the program Directors for the Project Management module (ELB013) which runs for the undergraduate students.
Dr. Upadhyaya is involved in the supervision of about 5-6 laboratory based postgraduate projects on thin-film solar cells each year.
View all Dr Upadhyaya’s publications in the central publications database
Selected Publications
Some selected publications:
- J.W.Bowers, H.M.Upadhyaya, S.Calnan, R.Hashimoto , T.Nakada and A.N.Tiwari, "Development of nano-TiO2 dye sensitised solar cells on high mobility transparent conducting oxide thin films".Progress in Photovoltaics: Research & Application, 17:265–272 (2009)
- Calnan, S., Upadhyaya, H.M., Dann, S.E., Thwaites, M. and Tiwari, A.N., ''Effects of Target Bias Voltage on Indium Tin Oxide Films Deposited by High Target Utilisation Sputtering'', Thin Solid Films, 515(24), October 2007, pp 8500-8504, ISSN 0040-6090.
- Liska, P., Thampi, K.R., Brémaud, D., Rudmann, D., Upadhyaya, H.M., Tiwari, A.N. and Grätzel, M., ‘Nanocrystalline dye-sensitized solar cell /copper indium gallium selenide thin film tandem showing greater than 15% conversion efficiency’. Applied Physics Lette 88, 203103 (2006).
- Hari M. Upadhyaya, Narukuni Hirata Saif A. Haque, Marco de Paoli and James R Durrant, ‘Kinetic competition in flexible dye sensitised solar cells employing a series of polymer electrolytes’ Chemical Communication, (2006) 877.
- Saif A. Haque, Emilio Palomares, H. M. Upadhyaya, Lucy Otley, Robert J. Potter and James R. Durrant, ‘Flexible dye sensitised nanocrystalline semiconductor solar cells’ Chemical Communication, 24 (2003) 3008.
- Bhaskar Bhattacharya, H.M. Upadhyaya and S. Chandra, ‘Photoeffects at an Ion Conducting Polymer / Semiconductor Junction’ Solid State Communication, Vol. 98 (7), 633-638, (1996).
- H.M. Upadhyaya and S. Chandra, ‘Polarity-Dependent Memory Switching Effects in the Ti / CdxPb1-x S / Ag system’ Semicond. Sci. Technol., Vol.10, pp.332-338, (1995).
- H.M. Upadhyaya and S. Chandra, ‘Chemical-Bath Deposition of Band Gap Tailored CdxPb1-xS Films’ J. Mater. Sci., Vol. 29, 2734-2740 (1994).
