We are excited to announce the Steven DiGregorio successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation (Interfacial Reduction Phenomena in Self-Reducing Reactive Silver Ink Systems) today. This is an exciting day and we are extremely proud of the work Steven has done. Steven joined our group in Fall 2019 and started working to understand how evaporation and reaction kinetics interact to control the morphology of printed reactive silver inks. His work ultimately showed why printing directly onto a heated substrate and suppressing complexing agent evaporation improves silver density and electrical properties. Using this insight, Steven developed reactive inks and printing conditions that produced extremely dense silver with good adhesion to silicon heterojunction cells and reduced the amount of silver needed to metallize these cells by 90%. Steven published seven papers in peer-reviewed journals (four as first author) along with a book chapter that appeared in Smart Multifunctional Nano-Inks.
Steven has accepted a post-doctoral position at Sandia National Labs, where he will continue to do amazing research. Steven, we are extremely proud of you and it has been wonderful working with you.