01 Mar Prof. Edgardo Saucedo, coordinator of SENSATE, receives the ICREA Acadèmia 2021 award

The Catalan Institution for Advanced Studies and Research (ICREA – Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats) has distinguished researcher Edgardo Saucedo with the ICREA Academia 2021. This grant will allow him to intensify over a period of five years his research of excellence.

The ICREA Acadèmia program was launched in 2008 with the aim of promoting and rewarding the professors’ excellence in research at public universities in Catalonia. Thus, the program helps to intensify the research carried out by university professors who are in a fully active and expansive phase of their research career.

Edgardo Saucedo is so far the author with the largest number of paper published worldwide in thin film PV kesterites, and one of the most cited. His leading capacities are demonstrated because he has coordinated large projects at European level including, in the last 5 years:  STARCELL -H2020-NMBP-03-2016-720907,  INFINITE-CELL  -H2020-MSCA-RISE-2017-777968 and  CUSTOM-ART  -H2020-LC-SC3-2020-RES-IA-CSA-952982, and  he was granted with an ERC Consolidator Grant (SENSATE, H2020-ERC-COG-2019-866018) in 2019 . He also has large experience coordinating relevant projects from the National I+D+i plans (IGNITE, MATER-ONE). In the last 5 years he has supervised 6 Thesis and 7 more are under supervision. In 2020 he was awarded with the ASEVA-Toyota Award for his contributions to the development of sustainable materials for photovoltaic applications.

Edgardo Saucedo will dedicate the ICREA grant to the line of research he started with the SENSATE project, funded with the Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), by boosting research into new materials based on low calco-halides dimensionality for advanced photovoltaic applications. This includes the study of materials with high structural anisotropy synthesized by high vacuum techniques and high pressure heat treatments, the properties of which can be manipulated by cationic / anionic composition and crystalline orientation. New low-dimensional materials that can have a big impact in the future, in applications such as transparent or very high-efficiency photovoltaic devices, such as solar cells in tandem configuration.