Bradley Schockman: A sunny future

 

Bradley Schockman doesn’t mess around with penny ante goals. He wants to find realistic solutions to bring into the real world!

“With the widespread need for sustainable energy, it was an honor to be able to join Professor Yiying Wu’s group during my freshman year here last year and to get started with the goal of changing something that really matters in today’s world,” said Bradley, who was just accepted into the chemical engineering program.

Since February 2016, he has been conducting research with Professor Wu and graduate student Kevin Click, whose research focuses on new and improved techniques to find realistic energy-conservation sources, such as more efficient solar cells. 

Dye-sensitized solar cells for sustainable energy

Bradley is currently working alongside graduate student Kevin Click to develop and test an aqueous p-type dye-sensitized for cell for a tandem cell design. The aqueous version has never been studied due to a lack of stability of the hydrophobic dye in aqueous conditions, and the cell will be the first of its kind to be published.

He and the rest of his group are hopeful that their aqueous solar cell will lead to new discoveries and a more efficient and effective dye-sensitized solar cell for solar fuel production. Ultimately, the goal is to develop a cell for production in the real world.

Bradley’s challenge:

In addition to his work with Kevin Click, Bradley is performing his own research to optimize usage of NiO films in dye-sensitized solar cells and water-splitting devices.

His project:

Develop methods to eliminate waste with dye-sensitized solar cells, which comes from using an inefficient amount of NiO. Eliminating waste would help facilitate the goal of scaling up profitable production of the cells.   

What’s next? 

“My goal in the group is to eventually work with Kevin to synthesize my own dyes for the cells, which would involve a lot of organic chemistry material that I am currently researching and studying. Because I am only going into my sophomore year, I will be taking organic chemistry next year. That means that I am self-teaching at this time, which is a great success and struggle at times, but well worth it,” he said.

Bradley plans to present at the Denman and College of Engineering fall poster forum here on campus.

 

Editor's Note

Visit the Undergraduate Research Office's Fall Forum and Poster Competition to see the results of the research efforts of the Undergraduate Research Office Summer Scholarship recipients: 

Eileen Elliott (Advisor: Jessica Winter)

Nathaniel Kramer (Umit Ozkan)

Nathaniel Olson (Nicholas Brunelli)

John Osburn (Daniel Dotson)

Ivan Pires (Andre Palmer)

Mitch Raith (David Wood)

Bradley Schockman (Yiying Wu).

These and other students will be presenting.

 

Undergraduate Research Office Fall Forum

Thursday, September 15, 2016, 11:00 am - 4 pm 

Buckeye Reading Room, Thompson Library