Virtual talks organized by the California Local Section Woman Chemists Committee are opened to the Permian Basin Local Section members to attend. The last talk of 2023 was the November 4, 2023, presentation “Shining light on solar cells and their material impacts”. As with previous sessions, time was allotted preceding the talk for attendees to participate in breakout sessions for networking. The talk concluded with a Q&A with the speaker.All talks were via Zoom.
Rachel Woods-Robinson, PhD
Rachel Woods-Robinson (she/her) received a B.S. in Physics from UCLA and a Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, designing new crystals for solar energy by combining computational chemistry, thin film growth, and device fabrication. Rachel recently started as a
Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Washington’s Clean Energy Institute to study environmental and human impacts of such new solar materials. In addition to research goals to curtail climate change, Rachel aims to support scientists in sharing our work accessibly and engaging collaboratively with our communities. From her love of outdoor adventuring, she co-founded “Cycle for Science,” in which scientists go on bicycle tours and visit K-12 classes to teach hands-on lessons about sustainability. She instructs “Cycle the Rockies” (Wild Rockies Field Institute), an immersive month-long course in which undergrads ride bicycles across Montana to learn about local energy and climate impacts.
To address climate change, transitioning to renewables such as photovoltaic solar panels is required, but one key barrier to this transition is that better materials are needed. This talk started with the sun and then zoomed into a solar panel all the way down to the nanoscale, highlighting materials challenges that scientists face at each length scale to make solar more efficient, reliable, and sustainable. The different material components, such as absorbers and transparent conductors (TCs), were introduced, and Rachel shared some of her research into designing new TCs for solar. Next, she zoomed back out to discuss challenges they faced beyond the lab in bringing solar to society, including critical raw materials, environmental impacts, and “green sacrifice zones.”
Lastly, Rachel shared some insights from her outreach project Cycle for Science and college course Cycle the Rockies. Cycle for Science brings interactive, renewable-energy focused science lessons to communities by bicycle.