Graduate Student Masoud Ghasemi Won the NCSU Physics Department Research Assistant Award

08/22/2017

The Research Assistant (RA) Award is annually given by the NCSU’s Department of Physics to the best graduate student contributing to research. This year’s recipient of the RA award is Masoud Ghasemi, a graduate student from Ade Research group. Ghasemi joined Physics Department in 2013 and started his research on organic electronics in the summer of 2014 under the supervision of Prof. Harald Ade, who is leading the Carbon Electronics CFEP cluster. His research is focused on unraveling the role of thermodynamic interactions on the morphology of solution-processed bulk heterojunction organic solar cells. Within the first two years of his research work, Ghasemi developed a new organic photovoltaic fabrication strategy that enabled the widening of light absorption range of organic solar cells. This initial research work, which was published in Advanced Materials, has laid a ground for Gahsemi’s further research on molecular design of bulk heterojunction morphology for fabrication of efficient solar cells.  By investigating basic thermodynamic interaction parameters, Ghasemi is currently trying to understand the factors that control the morphology of organic materials blend processed from solution. His work demonstrates the impact of  both kinetic and thermodynamic effects on the formation and stability of meso-scale morphology. This is a crucial step-forward in progressing the organic solar technology towards commercialization.