On March 7, Pr. Pere Roca i Cabarracas, Head of Laboratoire de Physique des Interfaces et des Couches Minces (LPICM), visited our institute and gave a presentation on thin solar cells. Pr. Roca first introduced the facilities and main research topics of LPICM. He is heading in Ecole Polytechnique. After reviewing Solar energy increasing contribution to world electricity production and the complexity of present fabrication processes of PV, he presented an overview of his recent studies on the plasma-processing aspects of the fabrication of silicon thin film solar cells. Results of investigations should lead to high efficiency while keeping the industrial production costs low.

In the afternoon, Prof. Roca paid a visit to WNLO. Dr. Joaquim Nassar and two PhD students of LPICM, who were invited to delivering a two-week “Fundamentals of solar energy” course to ICARE students, and Pr. YU Linwei, who is from Nanjing University accompanied the lab visit. A small seminar was also organized to introduce WNLO and the latest research achievement on solar cells.