JAXA: Perovskite Solar Cells

I had the great pleasure of getting to participate in the MIT MISTI Japan Program, where, under the direction of Dr. Hiroyuki Toyota, I fabricated and tested perovskite solar cells at JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency). The work I did while at JAXA included fabricating several perovskite solar cell samples via spin-coating, conducting proton irradiation experiments, and measuring parameters including x-ray diffraction, photoluminescence, IV-curve, and x-ray photospectroscopy for the samples before and after irradiation to determine their suitability for space applications.

As a student of the Japanese language and culture, I communicated almost exclusively in Japanese during my 3 months at JAXA, which included attending technical meetings, translating academic papers, and communicating with my coworkers in the lab. The work that the scientists at JAXA and I did culminated in a paper that I helped write.