Milan Padilla was born in Berlin on September 4th 1985 as a child of a German-Mexican family.
He spent his childhood in Berlin, Mexico-City, Bonn, Bucharest and Moscow. After his Abitur at the Canisius-Kolleg in Berlin he studied physics at TU München. During his university studies he spent two semesters at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris and spent a DAAD sponsored internship at the NCT University in Taiwan on plasmonic solar cells. Milan Padilla specialized his physics studies on the field of semiconductors and nano-optoelectronics, where he submitted his Diploma thesis in 2011 on the topic of "Photocurrent dynamics in semiconducting nanowires".
After his diploma he conducted a short research project at the Keio University in Japan on quantum information processing and worked as consultant at Siemens Management Consulting for an internship in the area of windpower. 2012 he received a stipend from the Reiner Lemoine Foundation to pursue a doctoral degree at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg.
„Quantitative Loss Analysis for the Optimization of High-Efficiency Silicon Solar Cells"
Cost-efficient solar cells are required to increase the portion of photovoltaics to the energy-mix of the future. Particularly the increase of cell and module efficiency is a powerful leaver for the decrease of costs, since higher efficiency can increases output power while module and installation costs remain constant. Several concepts for modern, cost efficient silicon solar cells with over 20% efficiency are under development and shall soon replace the standard industrial cells.
The primary goal of this thesis is to better understand the dominating loss mechanisms and to deliver decisive clues as to how to minimize them. A special challenge lies is the fact that the present characterization methods are insufficient for the complex modern cell structures. Currents no longer flow mostly vertical but also lateral and radial over the delicate, three-dimensional structures.
The results of this work shall lead to faster optimization of state-of-the-art cell concepts by precisely locating and interpreting problems in the solar cells. For this purpose, expertise in optical, electrical as well thermal analysis should be created. It is to expect that the key to understanding high-efficiency cells lies in the combination of various analysis methods. Primarily, the high efficiency concepts IBC (Interdigitated-Back-Contact), MWT/EWT (Metal/Emitter-Wrap-Through) and PERL (Passivated-Emitter-Rear-Locally-diffused-contact) will be investigated.
