Dr. Androula Nassiopoulou Androula Nassiopoulou is Director of Research at the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology of NCSR Demokritos, Head of the “Nanostructures for Nanoelectronics, Photonics and Sensors” research group and coordinator of the Nanoelectronics, Photonics and Microsystems research program of the Institute. She is the Former Director of the Institute of Microelectronics (IMEL) of NCSR Demokritos (1996-2009) and contributed to the establishment of the Institute as a Centre of Excellence in its field and the establishment and development of the Nanotechnology and Microsystems Laboratory, founding member of the European Institute of Nanoelectronics “Sinano” (www.sinano.eu). Androula Nassiopoulou is currently the Chairman of the General Assembly of Sinano. Her research interests include the physics and technology of low dimensional materials and their applications in electronics, sensors, solar cells and microsystems. She has published more than 300 papers in international journals, reviews, chapters in books and conference proceedings and edited 16 book volumes with research papers published as special topical issues in highly cited scientific journals and conference proceedings volumes.
Crystalline Si solar cells is a fast growing technology the last years, mainly due to the fact that the manufacturing cost of crystalline photovoltaic modules has decreased in recent years much faster than thin film photovoltaic modules. The state-of-the-art in crystalline Si solar cells will be reviewed and recent advances, which led to conversion efficiencies exceeding 25%, will be described. The best reported solar cell so far is based on a silicon heterojunction structure, the so-called HIT (heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer) solar cell. The basic materials and mechanisms involved will be described and the contribution of our group to the field with some novel materials and technologies will be shown.