Student projects or internship opportunities may be available. Interested parties may reach out Principal Investigator of NCF. Refer to Contact tab.

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2024 New Process and Characterization Instruments to NCF 

Investigators : Dr. Amin Reihani, Dr. Ngwe Zin

Award Amount : $135,000

Period of Performance : Jan 2024 – June 2024

As part of the successful funding award by the Office of Naval Research, the Dean's Office has approved the acquisition of new instruments: Maskless Lithography, Probe Station, High Resolution Optical Microscope, and Wire Bonder.

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2023 NSF Faculty Early Career Development Grant

Supported the NSF grant application by Prof. Amin Reihani. As part of the grant, NCF will provide access and training for educational access to potential users.

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2022 Core Facility Infrastructure Grant

Principal Investigator : Dr. Ngwe Zin

Award Amount : $80,000

Period of Performance : Nov 2021 – Nov 2022

Abstract : Nanofabrication CORE Facility (NCF) was opened to Rutgers users since September 2019. Since then, NCF has been adding a growing list of users ranging from undergrads, grads, postdocs, staff members of research groups within Rutgers community. Weeks Hall NCF has also upgraded its capabilities by adding a number of high-tech scientific equipment through the funding supports received from Vice Chancellor’s fund. Those strategic capability upgrades that NCF undertaken undeniably paved the winning of grants by a number of academics. Dr. Ngwe Zin, the director of NCF, is one of them winning a highly competitive federally funded award by the Department of Energy (DOE) in the year 2021. Rutgers is one of the few recipients for 2021 DOE grants, along with other elite universities in the nation, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Georgia Institute of Technology, etc. DOE project at Rutgers will characterize the performance of silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells with a dissolved ozone oxide (DI-O₃) layer applied as a tunneling oxide in passivated contact silicon solar cells. By exploiting the advantages of this novel DI-O₃ layer, the project can develop high-efficiency silicon solar cells at a fraction of the cost of currently manufactured silicon solar cells. The project will also make DI-O₃ to ultimately become a widely used layer not just in silicon solar cells, but also, microelectronics and MEMS, as it can be deposited using a low-cost and high-throughput manufacturing process. Besides the innovations in silicon solar cells that the project aims to deliver, the project will also give postdoctoral staff and graduate students invaluable experience with advanced characterization techniques and relevant microelectronic and PV technologies. Students and Staff will gain experience in design, fabrication, measurement, analysis, and optimization of DI-O₃ that can be used in crystalline and thin film silicon solar cells. Ultimately, this will prepare them to assume next generation leadership roles in relevant industry and academic sectors. Despite the upgrade of the capabilities at NCF to date, there are a number of scientific tools that NCF still need to acquire to address ever growing needs of many users within or outside of Rutgers community and of the recently awarded DOE project. Among them, an ultra-clean high temperature thermal furnace and ultra-high efficiency solar simulator are the much-needed tools for NCF in the near term.

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2022 NSF I-Corp Northeast Regional Program

Technical Lead : Dr. Ngwe Zin

Team Member : Dr. Vibhor Kumar and Dr. Munan Gao

Award Amount : $3,000

Period of Performance : Feb 2022 – Mar 2022

Abstract : In the NSF I-Corp Northeast Regional program, scientists and engineers take the first step in assessing if their research has the feasibility to become a product or service of benefit to society. Participants join the program in small teams organized around the development and commercialization of a particular discovery. Teams engage in customer discovery research aimed at investigating the commercial viability and societal impact of a novel discovery or process in science, technology or engineering. The program provides grants of up to $3,000 and training to support customer discovery and technology investigation. Each training program consists of 4 sessions (online) provided by instructors at our Hub institutions.

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2021 DOE SETO SIPS Funding

Principal Investigator : Dr. Ngwe Zin

Collaborators : Oxidation Technologies, LLC and University of Central Florida

Award Amount : $380,000

Period of Performance : Aug 2021 – Jan 2023

Abstract : Characterization and mitigating performance limiting defects in Silicon (Si) PV is one of key areas to be addressed to improve PV hardware costs and energy yield in order to lower the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of installed PV cost to $0.02/kWh. The passivated emitter and rear cells PERC have been the mainstream industrial silicon solar cells. As Si PV cells efficiencies have surpassed 22% and approaching 23%, the recombination at the metal contacts have become the focus point to be addressed. Passivated contact technologies—having a heterojunction with a band-gap larger than silicon between the metal and silicon—have emerged as a great potential for future high- and ultrahigh-efficiency solar cells, as it concurrently reduces recombination and increases carrier selectivity, by incorporating thin films within the contact structure. Passivated contact Si solar cell technologies use a wide variety of tunnel layers—playing a crucial role to passivate metal contacts and tunnel charge carriers—including SiO₂ grown by thermal oxidation and LPCVD technique and SiO_x by hot nitric acid. However, thorough investigations on understanding the failure and performance degradation mechanisms associated with tunnel layers are still limited to date. Unlocking those degradation characteristics in crucial tunnel layers could improve the reliability and energy yield of passivated contact Si solar cells. Besides, the technique of growing aforementioned tunneling layers are low throughput, and requires high temperature processes and/or a vacuum environment. In this project, we propose to characterize performance degradation mechanisms of a low-cost high-throughput deionized ozone oxide DI-O₃ tunnel layer for the passivated contact Si solar cells.

Useful link: https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/seto-2020-small-innovative-projects-solar-sips

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2021 NCF collaborated with

• Prof. Dunbar Barnie for the application of DOE for American Made Solar Prize competition
• Prof. Umer Hassan for the application of CORE Facility Utilization Grants
• Prof. Dunbar Barnie for the application of CORE Facility Utilization Grants
• Prof. Tugrul Ozel for the application of NSF proposal for CMMI Advanced Manufacturing program
• Prof Annie Xian Zhang of Stevens Institute of Technology for the application of NSF MRI proposal for the state-of-the-art ELS-G100 Ebeam Lithography.

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