Hai Wang receives the prestigious Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad

Mainz/Berlin. Hai Wang, a PhD student in the department of Molecular Spectroscopy at the MPI-P, has been awarded the "Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad" 2014. This prestigious prize, sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Education, recognizes the academic excellence of self-financed Chinese students studying overseas. No more than 500 young talents all over the world receive this award every year. Hai received the prize from the Chinese ambassador, Mr. Shi Mingde, during a ceremony held in Berlin on May 9, 2015.

Since January 2012, Hai attends the Graduate School of Excellence “Materials Science in Mainz” at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Together with Dr. Enrique Canovas and Prof. Dr. Mischa Bonn, Hai's work has been devoted to the characterization and modeling of photo-induced electron transfer processes at hybrid interfaces, which are relevant for novel low cost energy conversion schemes such as solar cells and fuels. Hai has demonstrated the tunneling nature of bridge mediated charge transfer in quantum dot sensitized architectures [1]; the suitability of atomic passivation of QDs by fine tuning of surface chemistry by stoichiometry control [2]; and, in collaboration with partners at University Jaume I (Spain) and East China University of Science and Technology (China) Hai contributed to the development of world record efficiency quantum dot sensitized solar cells [3]. At present Hai is working on increasing the efficiency of electron transfer processes in photovoltaic building blocks. These works could pave the way towards solar cells with efficiencies exceeding the Shockley-Queisser limit (efficiencies beyond 30%).