Mike Esch, who is an undergraduate at Grand Valley State, is joining our group for the summer. He’ll be applying computational tools to design cyanine dyes with optimal properties for luminescent solar concentrators. Welcome Mike!
Transparent Luminescent Solar Concentrators
Check out our work with the group of Richard Lunt of the MSU Chemical Engineering Department in our new paper in Advanced Optical Materials. With the goal of using windows for solar energy conversion, Richard’s group has developed devices which are nearly perfectly transparent to visible light, but use IR absorbing/emitting chromophores to concentrate light on photovoltaic cells around the edge of the device. Our calculations point towards ways to optimize the chromophores for larger devices by minimizing reabsorption losses.
Oskar and Monica Graduate!
Congratulations to Levine group undergraduates Monica O’Brien and Oskar Ubysz who are graduating with their bachelor’s degrees this weekend! Monica has applied quantum chemical methods to develop an understanding of singlet fission in a conjugated oligomer, while Oskar has developed a molecular dynamics code to compute the entropic barrier to reach a conical intersection seam. Both have done excellent work here, and we will be looking forward to seeing the great things they accomplish in their future careers!
Levine Research Group at Stony Brook University 