Joey Luther is a senior research fellow within the Materials, Chemical, and Computational Science directorate at NREL. He began his research career at North Carolina State University, and then moved to NREL during his graduate studies to study defects within various photovoltaic technologies. Under the direction of Arthur Nozik, while working on his doctorate through the Colorado School of Mines, he developed solar cells from colloidal nanocrystals, which exploit a phenomenon where multiple excitons are generated and harvested per incident photon. Luther then became a postdoctoral scholar in Paul Alivisatos’ group at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2009, he rejoined NREL as a senior research scientist.

Luther’s research interests focus on developing clean energy technologies through the frontiers of nanoscience and low-cost advanced processing. His research is funded by Basic Energy Sciences Energy Frontier Research Centers, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office, the U.S. Department of Defense, strategic partnerships with industry, and NASA.

2025 NASA Symp

Readying new materials for space: the launch of perovskites

As the space frontier moves ever closer, new technology is being deployed. Space is a wildly different environment which presents challenges to material behaviors. In this talk, we will discuss basic principles relevant to understanding how to ready new materials and devices for applications in space. This involves understanding the stressors, for example the radiation environment, and how to develop an understanding to test for such conditions using ground-based testing and verification. This could be applicable to technologies other than photovoltaics and be a framework for evaluation.

2024 NASA Symp

Hybrid metal halide perovskite semiconductors were first reported as a potential photovoltaic semiconductor in 2009 and since then has spread like wildfire. Perovskites now form the basis of a rapidly growing commercialization sector aiming to capitalize on their low cost, high efficiency, and other unique properties that enable multijunction photovoltaics like never before, novel manufacturing and more. Perovskites are inherently tolerant to crystalline defects which when coupled with other advantages described above provide a compelling case for growing market of space based power. This talk will describe the challenges facing perovskite for space and showcase several launches where perovskites are beginning to be tested in space environments.