Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin

Guest Editor for this issue of MRS Bulletin

Group for Molecular Engineering of Functional Materials, Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland; tel. +41 21 69 36124 and +41 21 69 33104; and email mdkhaja.nazeeruddin@epfl.ch.

Nazeeruddin is a professor and also directs the Group for Molecular Engineering of Functional Materials at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. He has published 500 articles, 10 review/invited book chapters, and has served as an inventor or co-inventor on over 50 patents. His current interests are dye-sensitized solar cells, perovskite solar cells, and organic light-emitting diodes. He has been appointed as a university professor in South Korea, Eminent Professor in Brunei, and Distinguished Professor at King Abdul Aziz University, Saudi Arabia.

Henry J. Snaith

Guest Editor for this issue of MRS Bulletin

Department of Physics and Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, UK; tel. +44 (0)1865 272380; and email h.snaith1@physics.ox.ac.uk.

Snaith is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford, where his research is focused on developing new materials and structures for hybrid solar cells and understanding and controlling the physical processes occurring at interfaces. He has made advances for emerging PV, including breakthroughs with perovskite solar cells. He has received a number of awards, including the MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award in 2014. In December 2010, he founded Oxford PV Ltd., which is commercializing the perovskite solar technology transferred from his university laboratory.

Colin D. Bailie

Stanford University, USA; email cdbailie@stanford.edu.

Bailie is a PhD student in materials science and engineering at Stanford University. He received his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering in 2010 at Texas A&M University, during which he worked on high-energy shockwaves for nuclear fusion systems. He received his master's degree in materials science in 2014 at Stanford University. His research interests are designing and prototyping new energy systems such as perovskite tandem solar cells.

Henk J. Bolink

Instituto de Ciencia Molecular, Universidad de Valencia, Spain; tel. +34963544416; and email henk.bolink@uv.es.

Bolink has been at the Instituto de Ciencia Molecular (ICMol) of the University of Valencia since 2003, where he initiated a research line on molecular optoeletronic devices. He obtained his PhD degree in materials science at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in 1997, on photorefractive polymers directed by G. Hadziioannou. He has been a private investigator of 10 European collaborative projects, is the co-author of more than 140 publications, and holds 10 patents. His current research interests include inorganic–organic hybrid materials and mixed electronic/ionic charge-transporting materials, and their integration in optoelectronic devices, particularly organic light-emitting devices and mixed organic–inorganic metal halide perovskite photovoltaic and light-emitting devices.

Qi Chen

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, USA; tel. 310-9831282; and email chachachenqi@ucla.edu.

Chen is working as a postdoctoral fellow at the California Nanosystems Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his PhD degree in materials science and engineering from UCLA in 2012. His research focuses on hybrid materials and polymer blends for various applications, such as photovoltaics, sensors, and detectors.

Lioz Etgar

Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; tel. +97226585325; and email lioz.etgar@mail.huji.ac.il.

Etgar has been a senior lecturer in the Institute of Chemistry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2012. He obtained his PhD degree in 2009 at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology. He completed his postdoctoral research with Michael Grätzel from 2009 to 2012 at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, where he received a Marie Curie Fellowship and won the Wolf Prize for young scientists. His research group focuses on the development of innovative solar cells. He is researching new excitonic solar cells structures/architectures while designing and controlling the inorganic sensitizer structure and properties to improve the PV parameters.

Lidón Gil-Escrig

Instituto de Ciencia Molecular, Universidad de Valencia, Spain; email lidon.gil@uv.es.

Gil-Escrig is a doctoral student at the Institute of Molecular Science at the University of Valencia. She received her degree in chemistry in 2012 and her master’s degree in applied chemistry and pharmacology in 2013, both at the Jaume I University, Spain. Her research focuses on multilayer perovskite-based optoelectronic devices.

Jin-Wook Lee

Department of Energy Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea; tel. +82-31-290-7338; and email jw.lee@skku.edu.

Lee is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Energy Science at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) under the supervision of Nam-Gyu Park. He received his BS degree in electronic and electrical engineering from SKKU in 2011. His research has focused on dye or quantum dot-sensitized solar cells. Currently, he is devoting his research to perovskite solar cells since the first report on solid-state perovskite solar cells developed in 2012 by Nam-Gyu Park’s group.

Michael D. McGehee

Materials Science and Engineering Department, Stanford University, USA; email mmcgehee@stanford.edu.

McGehee is a professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department and a senior fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University and his PhD degree in materials science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. McGehee’s research interests are patterning materials at the nanometer length scale, semiconducting polymers, and solar cells. He has taught courses on nanotechnology, nanocharacterization, organic semiconductors, polymer science, and solar cells. He was the recipient of the 2007 Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator Award.

Cristina Momblona

Instituto de Ciencia Molecular, Universidad de Valencia, Spain; email m.cristina.momblona@uv.es.

Momblona is a PhD student at the Institute for Molecular Science. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 2010 and her master’s degree in nanostructured materials for nanotechnology applications in 2012, both at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. Her current research interests are molecular electronics and optoelectronics, particularly photovoltaics and light-emitting devices.

Jun Hong Noh

Division of Advanced Materials, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, South Korea; email jhnoh@krict.re.kr.

Noh has been a senior researcher in the Division of Advanced Materials at Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology since 2011. He received his PhD degree in materials science and engineering from Seoul National University, Korea, which focused on nanostructural and compositional design of semiconducting and conducting metal oxides in photoelectric energy-conversion devices. His current research interests focus on inorganic–organic hybrid materials and photovoltaic devices, including inorganic–organic hybrid perovskite solar cells.

Nam-Gyu Park

School of Chemical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea; tel. +82-31-290-7241; and email npark@skku.edu.

Park is a distinguished professor at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU). He received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in chemistry from Seoul National University in 1988, 1992, and 1995, respectively. He was a postdoctoral researcher at ICMCB-CNRS, France, and National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA. He then worked for the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Korea, from 2000 to 2005. He was the director of the solar-cell research center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology from 2005 to 2009. He joined SKKU’s School of Chemical Engineering in 2009 as a full professor. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to solar-cell research and development. His research has focused on dye-sensitized solar cells since 1997, and he currently focuses on perovskite solar cells since the first report on solid-state perovskite solar cells developed by his group in 2012.

Sang-Il Seok

Division of Advanced Materials, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, South Korea; email seoksi@krict.re.kr and Department of Energy Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea; email seoksi@skku.edu.

Seok is the director of the Center for Solar Energy Materials as a research fellow at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT). He also holds a dual appointment as a full professor in the Department of Energy Science at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea. He obtained his PhD degree in the Department of Inorganic Materials Engineering of Seoul National University, South Korea, in 1995. Since 2006, his research has focused on the integration of mesoporous architecture/semiconductor nanocrystals (including quantum dots and organometal halide perovskite materials)/organic hole conductors for high-performance inorganic–organic hybrid photovoltaics.

Michele Sessolo

Instituto de Ciencia Molecular, Universidad de Valencia, Spain; email michele.sessolo@uv.es.

Sessolo is a research fellow at the Institute of Molecular Science, University of Valencia. He received his BS degree in chemistry from the University of Padova, Italy, and his PhD degree in 2010 at the University of Valencia for his work on hybrid light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells. He then joined the Department of Bioelectronics at the Centre Microélectronique de Provence, France, and worked on the application of conducting polymers to neural engineering. His research interests include the development of novel organic–inorganic materials for LEDs and photovoltaics, and the application of mixed ionic–electronic conductors to electrochemical transistors and sensors.

Yang Yang

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, USA; tel. 310-8254052; and email yangy@ucla.edu.

Yang is the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas Jr. Endowed Chair Professor of Materials Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his MS and PhD degrees in physics and applied physics from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 1988 and 1992, respectively. Before he joined UCLA in 1997, he served on the research staff at UNIAX (now DuPont Display) from 1992 to 1996. He is a Fellow of MRS, SPIE, RSC, and the Electromagnetic Academy. He has expertise in the fields of organic, inorganic, and organic/inorganic hybrid electronics, and the development and fabrication of related devices, such as photovoltaic cells, LEDs, transistors, and memory devices.

Huanping Zhou

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, USA; tel. 310-9831282; and email happyzhou@ucla.edu.

Zhou is currently a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Peking University, China. She was working with professor Yang Yang at the University of California, Los Angeles, as a postdoctoral fellow during 2011–2015. She received her PhD degree in inorganic chemistry from Peking University, China, in 2010. Her research focuses on nanomaterials, thin films, and optoelectronics.