Freitag Lab

Biography

I currently hold a position as Royal Society University Research Fellow at Newcastle University, where I have assembled a small group, consisting of a 3 PhD students and 2 postdoctoral researchers. Our research is focused on coordination chemistry for energy applications with a successful collaboration network.
My research into hybrid devices, specifically electrochromics based on viologens and macromolecular cages, began during my doctoral studies (2007-2011, Rutgers University, NJ, USA) with Prof Elena Galoppini.  My PhD project, electrochemical and photochemical properties of novel guest-host complexes based on Viologen and Cucurbituril, was recognized by Rutgers University with the Dean Dissertation Fellowship. Subsequently, I moved to Uppsala University for a two-year (2013-2015) postdoctoral research position, funded by Merck AG, which focused on the implementation, synthesis, and characterization of alternative redox mediators in DSCs. There, I made a breakthrough in developing new solid-state hole transport materials based on copper coordination complexes, known to the community as “zombie solar cells” (EES 2016 and patent EP14180515), based on the unique deposition method, that I created. I was invited to further develop this work at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) by Prof. Anders Hagfeldt (July 2015-August 2016), where I developed new coordination complexes as redox mediators and hole transport materials, reaching record efficiencies with both systems (molten salts and dopants, US20160233439, IB2017000385-RO10). From 2016-2019 I was appointed as fixed term Assistant Professor at Uppsala University, Sweden where I also received the Göran Gustaffsson Young Researcher Award 2019 and supervised students of different seniority (PhD, Masters, Undergraduate) .