DKK 40 million grant for research in materials science
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has granted DKK 40 million to four partners at DTU for research in materials science aimed at making solar cells thinner, cheaper, and more efficient.
Friday 27 June 2025
Freja E. Klippmann
Associate Professor Mikkel N. Schmidt, DTU Compute, leads the research project that aims to make solar cells more efficient over the next 6 years.
Solar cells are important because they have a significant impact on the use of renewable energy in the future. Existing solar cells are expensive to produce and require large amounts of materials. Therefore, it would benefit the green transition to develop more efficient, cheaper, and thinner solar cells that are also much more flexible.
Using the supercomputer Gefion, artificial intelligence will suggest new materials for the thin solar cells during the project. DTU Nanolab will produce and test the solar cells in the centre’s laboratories, while two departments at DTU Physics contribute with knowledge about, among other things, the properties of materials.
The official project title is ’AI-driven materials optimization for light trapping in thin-film solar cells’.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has granted the project DKK 40 million over the next 6 years, with the project beginning on 1 August 2025.
The project is a collaboration between four researchers at DTU: Mikkel N. Schmidt, DTU Compute, Andrea Crovetto, DTU Nanolab, Søren Raza, DTU Physics, and Kristian Sommer Thygesen, DTU Physics.
