Jao van de Lagemaat
Acting Center Director of the Chemical and Materials Sciences Center

Jao van de Lagemaat, received his PhD in 1998 from the University of Utrecht. He worked on the exciton dynamics, charge transport properties, and the physical and chemical properties of interfaces of large band gap semiconductors like SiC, GaP, GaN and diamond. From 1998 to 2001 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

His studies focused on charge transport and recombination in dye-sensitized solar cells. His papers in this field have proven seminal to the understanding of this unique system. From 2001 to the present he has worked as a Scientist at NREL on the energetics and transport properties of single semiconductor nanoparticles (quantum dots) and arrays of nanoparticles using tunneling spectroscopy and microscopy, transient photocurrent, transistor measurements, and computer modeling.

Currently he is the acting Center Director of the Chemical and Materials Sciences Center at NREL which is comprised of close to 180 Scientists and other staff. He is also a Principal Scientist and is researching tunneling-induced luminescence and plasmon-resonance imaging of individual quantum dots, the interaction between carbon nanotubes and organic semiconductors, as well as the use of plasmonic-enhancement effects in solar-energy conversion systems.