Professor Kai Shum: In the Race for Alternative Energy Sources
For the second consecutive year, Associate Professor of Physics Kai Shum has secured $123,000 in private funding from OmniPV to continue to develop a fourth generation of solar cells. 
“We are working with perovskite,” Shum says, referring to a calcium titanium oxide mineral that has been successfully used in high-temperature superconductors. “But we need to take this research to the next level.”
A researcher and educator on semiconductor nanostructures for optoelectronics who joined Brooklyn College three years ago, Shum is working on several journal articles on his work.
“Our project is based on an idea from the 1940s that died because the technology to develop special materials wasn’t there,” Shum explains. “If successful, it could lower the cost of solar cells and make this technology more affordable.”
OmniPV, a Palo Alto, Calif.–based private company that specializes in photovoltaic technology, decided to finance Shum’s work as scientists look for alternatives to silica, the prime material used in today’s solar photovoltaic cells, which convert light into electricity.
Silica, the most abundant material in the earth’s crust, is used to manufacture such common items as glass, concrete, ceramics and toothpaste. But because too much energy is needed to purify it for photovoltaic use, it has thus far proven economically unviable to produce for the mass market.
According to Shum, perovskite has a high efficiency conversion ratio and a lifespan of approximately 20 years, which makes it a very promising technology in the race to develop alternative sources to fossil fuels.
In spring 2008, Shum and Assistant Professor of Physics Mim Lal Nakarmi signed an agreement between FirstNano/CVD and CUNY Brooklyn College/NYSTAR-CAT to develop zinc oxide nano materials and related devices. Shum hopes to have a prototype that could prove to be reliable, efficient and affordable by next year.
