Dr. Wang is Senior Research Fellow and Principal Investigator in Materials & Engineering Research Institute (MERI) at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. He is currently leading his research group and working on aspects of hybrid sol-gel materials, solar energy materials and photovoltaic devices, electrically conductive nanomaterials, solid electrolytes and electrical materials for energy storage, functional adhesives/coatings for aerospace polymer-carbon composites, anticorrosion and antibiofouling coatings for aerospace and marine applications, CVD deposited materials, etc. Dr. Wang supervises/superivised+10 Ph.D students with +30 Journal publications/patents. He has wide collaborations with many international and national companies. Dr Wang obtained his Ph.D from Sheffield Hallam University and Master/Bachelor degrees from Zhejiang University, China.

Si-wafer-based solar cells (SWSGs) currently dominate the photovoltaic market with ~ 90% of the market share. Half of their cost comes from manufacturing of silicon wafers. High-cost compared to that of fossil fuels has restricted their wide adoption for renewable energy. Therefore, solution-processed solar cells have attracted enormous interests owing to their potential low-cost via roll-to-roll fabrication methods at low temperature. In recent years, significant progress has been made in polymer and hybrid solar cells (PHSGs). Particularly for halide perovskite-based solar cells, their power conversion efficiency has matched to that of SWSGs. However, the main issue faced by PHSGs is their poor stability, which deters the large-scale deployment. Hybrid nanocomposite (NC) materials can play their key roles on enhancement of stability and efficiency for PHSGs; e.g. a sol-gel/PEDOT:PSS NC material revealsa “water-impermeable” property as hole transport layer in solar cells and polymer-perovskite nanocomposites provide a novel route for exploring stable and high-efficient light absorber. This talk will present our recent work (patented technologies) in these aspects.