University of Notre Dame undergraduate, Andrew Christy ‘22, was published as a second author for a paper in ACS Materials Letters that he contributed to while working as a laboratory assistant in the Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory.
He contributed to the paper, “Transformation of Perovskite Nanoplatelets to Large Nanostructures Driven by Solvent Polarity,” in collaboration with Prashant Kamat, the Rev. John A. Zahm Professor of Science in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, and other researchers.
In this paper, Christy and other members of the Kamat lab found that perovskite nanoplatelets eventually “ripen” into nanocubes over time, and the polarity of the solvent that they are in can affect this process. This is relevant to the field of solar energy research because nanoplatelets have a variety of uses in processes that raise energy levels. If the nanoplatelets transform into nanocubes due to the solvent that they are in, it could alter their stability, which could then affect these energy processes. Christy, a chemistry major originally from Morgantown, West Virginia, completed this project during a summer Slatt Fellowship. The Slatt Fellowship for Undergraduate Research in Energy Systems and Processes provides funding for undergraduates to conduct energy-related research projects. This is his fifth semester as an undergraduate research assistant in Kamat’s laboratory, which specializes in studying nanoarchitectures and energy conversion processes using a multidisciplinary approach from chemistry, chemical engineering, and physics.
After graduation, Christy will be pursuing a doctoral degree in chemistry or materials science.
“I’d like to thank Dr. Kamat and Jeff Dubose, my supervisors in the lab, for all of their help over the last couple years,” Christy said. “I’d also like to thank ND Energy for their generous funding of my research last summer.”