Undergraduate Sebastian Bustos-Nuno and Ph.D. student mentor Ethan Schwartz power up and run the Testbeds' solar simulator to test the efficiency of a perovskite module.
By Brooke Fisher | Photos by Dennis Wise
October 16, 2023
This article has been condensed from its original form on the UW College of Engineering website.
Advancing the future of clean energy is a powerful experience. Just ask mechanical engineering (ME) undergraduate Sebastian Bustos-Nuno, who worked this summer at the Washington Clean Energy Testbeds to advance the next generation of solar cells, called perovskite photovoltaics.
“It’s pretty awesome. All of this is a first-time experience — it’s my first time working with a professor and a Ph.D. student,” says Bustos-Nuno, who first became interested in solar cells in the fifth grade during a field trip to a community college.
Funded by UW’s Alliances for Learning and Vision for Underrepresented Americans program, Bustos-Nuno helped advance a promising new technology, which crafts solar cells from the mineral perovskite, rather than silicon. While perovskite offers greater flexibility as a thin film and is lower cost, one hurdle to widespread use is scalability. As the footprint of thin film solar modules expands, it becomes increasingly difficult to extract the high currents without losing some of the energy produced.
“For clean energy to have an impact, it has to be commercialized. Closing that gap is a way to make the region a hub for clean energy,” explains Testbeds technical director J. Devin MacKenzie, who is an associate professor of ME and materials science & engineering and the Washington Research Foundation Professor of Clean Energy at the UW. “Sebastian’s work centered on how to more efficiently pull power out of solar cells, which is one of the hardest but potentially most impactful parts from an engineering perspective.”
To evaluate the electrical properties of the perovskite modules, such as the current generated, and enable repeatable measurements, Bustos-Nuno designed and fabricated a testing device called a continuous probe bar station. But his work didn’t end there — Bustos-Nuno is continuing on in the lab this fall as a junior, and envisions a career either in clean energy or the aerospace industry.
“I gave him a textbook and he’s been reading it like a novel. He’s super invested,” says ME Ph.D. student and Clean Energy Institute Graduate Fellow Ethan Schwartz, who mentored Bustos-Nuno.
