Summary
Dr. Robert Hoye leads the Energy Materials and Devices Group in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM), a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Scientist. He is also an honorary Fellow of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (Canada).
Visit the Energy Materials and Devices Group website
The group is experimentally-driven and focusses on the development of semiconducting materials for clean energy conversion, particularly photovoltaics and light-emitting diodes. There are three main areas of research: 1) the development of materials that can tolerate defects, 2) scalable manufacturing of semiconductors, and 3) engineering of advanced devices, including in-depth characterisation to understand the loss mechanisms. The group's work has led to strong performance metrics across a range of next-generation optoelectronic devices. The work has been featured by Nature Physics, press releases, research news, in museums and by the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Robert completed his PhD in the University of Cambridge (2012-2014) on oxide charge transport layers for optoelectronics and was awarded the Jackman prize for best thesis. He was subsequently a postdoctoral researcher (2015-2016) at MIT, working on creating bismuth-based photovoltaics, which was awarded a patent and selected as one of 12 Science Highlights of 2016 out of all 605 groups funded by the US Department of Energy. In 2016, he was awarded the Nevile Research Fellowship at Magdalene College, with which he returned to Cambridge to work in the Optoelectronics Group. In 2018, he received the Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship, with which he initially set up an independent group at the University of Cambridge. In 2019, he was elected a Fellow of Downing College Cambridge for a year through the Kim and Juliana Silverman Research Fellowship. He became a Lecturer in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London in 2020. At Imperial, he retains his Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship. Robert is part of the Functional Materials Theme at Imperial, and is involved with the Imperial spoke of the Sir Henry Royce Institute.
Robert has been awarded the Young Engineer of the Year Prize by the Royal Academy of Engineering (2018). In 2019, he was awarded the Sir Henry Royce Medal by the Institution of Engineering and Technology. In 2020, he received one of the Rising Star awards from the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN). In 2021, he was awarded the Imperial President's Award for Outstanding Early Career Researcher, as well as the Rosenhain Medal and Prize from the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining for distinguished achievement in any branch of Materials Science.
Robert is on the management committee of the CDT in the Advanced Characterisation of Materials. He also teaches a second year Materials course on Semiconductor Devices (MATE50002), as well as a fourth-year course on Advanced Thin Films Manufacturing (MATE97014/15). He has promoted Materials Science to the general public through his work with the Education team at the Royal Academy of Engineering. Recently, this was by making the resource box titled 'Engineering Materials for a Greener Planet'.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
RESEARCH ARTICLES
* denotes corresponding author, † denotes joint first author
Virgil Andrei,† Robert A. Jagt, Motiar Rahaman, Leonardo Lari, Vlado K. Lazarov, Judith L. MacManus-Driscoll,* Robert L. Z. Hoye,* Erwin Reisner.* Long-term solar water and CO2 splitting with photoelectrochemical BiOI–BiVO4 tandems. Nature Materials, 2022, Early View. DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01262-w
Robert L. Z. Hoye,* Lana C. Lee, Rachel C. Kurchin, Tahmida N. Huq, Kelvin H. L. Zhang, Melany Sponseller, Lea Nienhaus, Riley E. Brandt, Joel Jean, J. Alexander Polizzotti, Ahmed Kursumović, Moungi G. Bawendi, Vladimir Bulović, Vladan Stevanović, Tonio Buonassisi,* Judith L. MacManus-Driscoll.* Strongly Enhanced Photovoltaic Performance and Defect Physics of Air-Stable Bismuth Oxyiodide (BiOI). Advanced Materials, 2017, 29, 1702176.
Highlighted in a press release from the University of Cambridge: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/non-toxic-alternative-for-next-generation-solar-cells
Robert L. Z. Hoye, Matthew R. Chua, Kevin P. Musselman, Guangru Li, May-Ling Lai, Zhi-Kuang Tan, Neil C. Greenham, Judith L. MacManus-Driscoll, Richard H. Friend, Dan Cregington.* Enhanced Performance in Fluorene-Free Organometal Halide Perovskite Light-Emitting Diodes using Tunable, Low Electron Affinity Oxide Electron Injectors. Advanced Materials, 2015, 27, 1414.
Cited over 200 times and one of the top 1% of Materials Science articles by citations for 2015-2020 according to Web of Science.
Robert L. Z. Hoye,†,* May-Ling Lai,† Miguel Anaya, Yu Tong, Krzystof Gałkowski, Tiarnan Doherty, Weiwei Li, Tahmida N. Huq, Sebastian Mackowski, Lakshminarayana Polavarapu, Jochen Feldmann, Judith L. MacManus-Driscoll, Richard H. Friend, Alexander S. Urban, Samuel D. Stranks.* Identifying and Reducing Interfacial Losses to Enhance Color-Pure Electroluminescence in Blue-Emitting Perovskite Nanoplatelet Light-Emitting Diodes. ACS Energy Letters, 2019, 4, 1181.
† Equal contribution
Robert A. Jagt, Tahmida N. Huq, Sam A. Hill, Maung Thway, Tianyuan Liu, Mari Napari, Bart Roose, Krzysztof Gałkowski, Weiwei Li, Serena Fen Lin, Samuel D. Stranks, Judith L. MacManus-Driscoll, Robert L. Z. Hoye.* Rapid Vapor-Phase Deposition of High-Mobility p-Type Buffer Layers on Perovskite Photovoltaics for Efficient Semi-Transparent Devices. ACS Energy Letters, 2020, 5, 2456-2465.
Highlighted in a press release from Imperial. Read here
REVIEW ARTICLES
Carlo A. R. Perini, Tiarnan A. S. Doherty, Samuel D. Stranks,* Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena,* Robert L. Z. Hoye.* Pressing challenges in halide perovskite photovoltaics—from the atomic to module level. Joule, 2021, 5(5), 1024-1030.
Invited Future Energy piece
Robert L. Z. Hoye,* Philip Schulz, Laura T. Schelhas, Aron M. Holder, Kevin H. Stone, John D. Perkins, Derek Vigil-Fowler, Sebastian Siol, David O. Scanlon, Andriy Zakutayev, Aron Walsh, Ian C. Smith, Brent C. Melot, Rachel C. Kurchin, Yiping Wang, Jian Shi, Francisco C. Marques, Joseph J. Berry, William Tumas, Stephan Lany, Vladan Stevanović, Michael F. Toney, Tonio Buonassisi.* Perovskite-Inspired Photovoltaic Materials: Toward Best Practices in Materials Characterization and Calculations. Chemistry of Materials, 2017, 29, 1964.
Included as an example of best research by Chemistry of Materials, and highlighted by the American Chemical Society. Top 1% of Materials Science articles by citations for 2017 according to Web of Science.
Samuel D. Stranks,* Robert L. Z. Hoye, Dawei Di, Richard H. Friend,* Felix Deschler.* The Physics of Light Emission in Halide Perovskite Devices. Advanced Materials, 2019, 31, 1803336.
Included as part of a Special Issue on Metal-Halide Perovskite Semiconductors, Emitters and Photon Absorbers. Top 0.1% of Materials Science articles by citations for 2020 according to Web of Science.
Publications
Journals
Jagt R, Bravic I, Eyre L, et al., 2023, Layered BiOI single crystals capable of detecting low dose rates of X-rays, Nature Communications, Vol:14, ISSN:2041-1723, Pages:1-12
Zhang K, Gao Y, PInho B, et al., 2023, The importance of transport phenomena on the flow synthesis of monodispersed sharp blue-emitting perovskite CsPbBr3 nanoplatelets, Chemical Engineering Journal, Vol:451, ISSN:1385-8947, Pages:1-9
Silva JPB, Gwozdz K, Marques LS, et al., 2022, Large ferro-pyro-phototronic effect in 0.5Ba(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O-3-0.5(Ba0.7Ca0.3)TiO3 thin films integrated on silicon for photodetection, Carbon Energy
Li Z, Huang Y-T, Mohan L, et al., 2022, Elucidating the factors limiting the photovoltaic performance of mixed Sb-Bi halide elpasolite absorbers, Solar Rrl, Vol:6, ISSN:2367-198X, Pages:1-9
Huang Y-T, Kavanagh S, Righetto M, et al., 2022, Strong absorption and ultrafast localisation in NaBiS2 nanocrystals with slow charge-carrier recombination, Nature Communications, Vol:13, ISSN:2041-1723