Dr Phillip Hamer

Dr Phillip Hamer is an ACAP Postdoctoral Fellow and the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering. Since completing his PhD in photovoltaics at UNSW in 2015 he has spent 3 years as a postdoctoral researcher and Junior Research Fellow at the Department of Materials in the University of Oxford. He has published more than 40 research papers and is a co-inventor on 5 patents. He is best known for his studies on the introduction and manipulation of hydrogen to passivate defects in silicon solar cells.

His current research interests follow on from this work, with the primary focus being the modelling of hydrogen transport within silicon solar cell structures. In order to do this the parameters for hydrogen diffusion and interaction with common impurities are being investigated in detail. These fundamental studies link with a large number of other research projects within the University, including attempts to mitigate light-induced degradation and contact resistance issues in multicrystalline solar cells and the hydrogenation of solar cell geometries based on amorphous silicon or metal oxide passivation schemes.