PVSC Awards

William R. Cherry Award


PVSC 44 William R. Cherry Awardee

Prof. Eli Yablonovitch, Director of the NSF Center for Energy Efficiency Electronics Science headquartered at Berkeley, will receive the William Cherry Award in recognition of his many contributions to solar cell device physics and technology.
                                   
Although Yablonovitch has worked in a variety of pure and applied fields, his first love has always been Photovoltaics, which he regards as part of the same double-heterostructure family as LED’s and semiconductor lasers.  In his photovoltaic research, he introduced the 4(n squared) (“Yablonovitch Limit”) light-trapping factor that is in worldwide use for almost all commercial solar panels.  He also published research on the fundamental efficiency limits in solar cells and developed novel surface passivations for silicon and GaAs.

His mantra that “a great solar cell also needs to be a great LED”, is the basis of the world record solar cells: single-junction 28.8% efficiency; dual-junction 31.5% at Alta Devices Inc.; & quadruple-junction 38.8% efficiency in NREL; all at 1 sun.

Eli Yablonovitch introduced the idea that strained semiconductor lasers could have superior performance due to reduced valence band (hole) effective mass.  With almost every human interaction with the internet, optical telecommunication occurs by strained semiconductor lasers.

He is regarded as a Father of the Photonic BandGap concept, and he coined the term "Photonic Crystal". The geometrical structure of the first experimentally realized Photonic bandgap, is sometimes called “Yablonovite”.

Eli has founded or cofounded several companies, including Ethertronics, Inc. (cellphone antennas) and Luxtera (originator of Silicon Photonics).

Prof. Yablonovitch is elected as a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London, and has received numerous other prestigious awards.

He received his Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics from Harvard University in 1972, worked for two years at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and then became a professor of Applied Physics at Harvard. In 1979 he joined Exxon to do research on photovoltaic solar energy. Then in 1984, he joined Bell Communications Research, where he was Director of Solid-State Physics Research. In 1992 he joined the University of California, Los Angeles, prior to joining U. C. Berkeley as Professor of E.E. and Computer Sciences, where he holds the James & Katherine Lau Chair in Engineering.

 

 

WILLIAM R. CHERRY COMMITTEE

Steve Ringel
Cherry Committee Chair
Ohio State University

Ronald A. Sinton
Cherry Award Chair
Sinton Instruments

Tim Anderson
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Sheila G. Bailey
NASA Glenn Research Center

Allen M. Barnett
University of New South Wales

Paul Basore
PV Specialist Services LLC

John Benner
Stanford University

Henry W. Brandhorst, Jr.
Auburn University

David E. Carlson
BP Solar


Timothy Coutts
National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Keith Emery
National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Dennis J. Flood
North Coast Initiatives Ltd.

Americo F. Forestieri
MOE Consulting

Martin A. Green
University of New South Wales

Christiana Honsberg
Arizona State University

Lawrence L. Kazmerski
National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Richard R. King
Arizona State University

Sarah Kurtz
National Renewable Energy Laboratory

John D. Meakin
University of Delaware

Ryne Raffaelle
Rochester Institute of Technology

Eugene Ralph
PV Consulting

Angus Rockett
Colorado School of Mines

Ajeet Rohatgi
Georgia Institute of Technology

BJ Stanbery
Helios Corporation

Pierre Verlinden
Trina Solar

Robert J. Walters
Naval Research Laboratory

Stuart Wenham
University of New South Wales

David Wilt
Cherry Award Co-Chair
U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory

Christopher R. Wronski
Pennsylvania State University

Masafumi Yamaguchi
Toyota Technological Institute


Previous Recipients

Dr. Paul Rappaport 1980

Dr. Joseph L. Loferski 1981

Prof. Martin Wolf 1982

Dr. Henry W. Brandhors
t 1984

Mr. Eugene L. Ralph
1985

Dr. Charles E. Backus
1987

Dr. David E. Carlson 1988

Dr. Martin A. Green 1990

Mr. Peter A. Iles 1991

Dr. Lawrence L. Kazmerski 1993

Prof. Yoshihiro Hamakawa
1994

Dr. Allen M. Barnett
1996

Dr. Adolf Goetzberger
1997

Dr. Richard J. Schwartz 1998

Dr. Christopher R. Wronski 2000

Dr. Richard M. Swanson 2002

Dr. Ajeet Rohatgi 2003

Dr. Timothy J. Coutts 2005

Dr. Antonio Luque 2006

Dr. Masafumi Yamaguchi
2008

Dr. Stuart Wenham 2009

Dr. Richard R. King 2010

Dr. Jerry M. Olson 2011

Dr. Sarah Kurtz 2012

Dr. Keith Emery 2013

Dr. Ronald A. Sinton 2014

Dr. Christiana Honsberg 2015

Dr. Pierre Verlinden 2016


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