Welcome to the website of the Rao Group, part of the Optoelectronics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. Our research is focussed on the optical and electronic properties of a new generation of energy materials which will see applications ranging from photovoltaics and LEDs to batteries and thermoelectrics.
Our paper on endothermic charge generation in organic photovoltaics is accepted to Nature Communications.
Raj and Jesse successfully defended their thesis’ over the summer
We are developing strategies to push the limits of conventional solar cells and dramatically increase the efficiency and hence lower the cost of solar energy.
We are developing and applying new methods to understand how the motion and dynamics of charges, excitons and phonons control the properties of semiconductor molecules, materials and devices.
Traditionally ultrafast spectroscopy has been conducted on large ensembles. But the motion of photoexcitations at the nanoscale is crucial to much of the physics of many systems.
We design and fabricate nanomaterials, including lanthanide-doped nanoparticles, colloidal quantum dots and hybrid organic-inorganic systems. We explore the photophysics of these systems using our ultrafast spectroscopy toolkit and also explore their use in next generation of electronic and photonic devices, such as photovoltaics that could break the Shockley-Queisser limit.
