Appu Paduthol

Dr. Appu Paduthol completed his PhD at University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Energy Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) in 2013.  He worked for 2 years in with Bosch India, where he led the design of multiple large scale solar power plants across India.

In 2015, he joined UNSW as a PhD student and has been working on characterisation of solar cells by contactless measurement of quantum efficiency using spectral response of luminescence. Applying this measurement technique on amorphous-silicon passivated solar cell structures, he discovered that the amorphous-silicon layer can be electrically transparent although is optically highly absorbing. This was later used to quantify the impact of different types of capping layers on such a carrier injection. This work was well received and recognised with the Best Student Paper award at the EUPVSE Conference in 2017.