Welcome to the Center for Interface Science:
Solar Electric Materials (CIS:SEM)

CIS:SEM is one of 46 Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) programs created in 2009 by the U.S. Department of Energy to focus on the basic science necessary to create abundant, clean, and economical energy technologies for the 21st century. The University of Arizona, the lead institution for CIS:SEM, and its partners from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Washington, Princeton University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL) are engaged in a five-year, $15M effort. As set forth in the DOE Grand Challenges, CIS:SEM is focused on those basic science issues that will lead to understanding, controlling, and improving interfaces in Generation III photovoltaic platforms based on organic and organic-inorganic hybrid materials.

Emerging Generation III solar cells employ polymer or small molecule active layers in thin-film formats, many on flexible inexpensive substrates, produced by area-scalable technologies. Interfaces currently significantly limit the energy conversion efficiencies and scale-up of Generation III solar cells: some of the most sophisticated photovoltaic devices have 10’s of critical interfaces.