Dr. Ian Howard

I am a member of the Max Planck Research Group for Organic Optoelectronics located at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz.

I am interested in understanding how organic solar cells work. Specifically, I am interested in understanding the process of photo-induced charge separation in organic semiconductors; that is, how the energy of an absorbed photon can lead to an electron-hole pair and how this electron-hole pair behaves after its formation. To study these processes, we use time-resolved optical spectrosopy with a time resolution of less than 200 fs but a measurement window as long as a millisecond (10 orders of magnitude longer than our time resolution!). Our precise observations over this long time range illuminate the entire 'life-cycle' of the energy of a photon after it is absorption in an organic solar cell, and reveal the precise stages at which portions of this energy become lost. This understanding allows us, in cooperation with collaborators, to develop new materials and engineer new devices that suppress these losses of energy and lead to more efficient solar cells.