Forging Solar Energy Solutions One Perovskite at a Time

Newswise — Kristen Tagaytayan carefully unearthed her research sample from a nitrogen glovebox. She gingerly placed the sample onto her workspace and added a nickel chemical solution to it. Using a razor blade, she evened out the mixture across a glass slide and placed it in the lab’s oven, where she watched it cook from behind the glass window.If you asked the first-year mechanical engineering graduate student a couple of years ago where she’d be today, she never would have guessed it would be conducting research as part of a NASA fellowship that could change the future of space travel, energy, and maybe even the world as we know it. Flashback to her sophomore year as an undergrad at UNLV: Tagaytayan had been feeling dejected when she realized physics wasn’t her calling. She thought this meant her childhood dream of working with NASA wouldn’t pan out. But as she passed…

Read more…