Richard Ahrenkiel —

Biography

 Dr. Ahrenkiel is a Research Fellow Emeritus of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Research Professor of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado.   His area of specialization is the measurement and characterization of photovoltaic cells and materials and he is one of the world experts in the area of carrier recombination and carrier lifetime. He has invented a unique technique for measuring the excess carrier lifetime in materials. The latter has been named Resonance-coupled photoconductive decay (RCPCD), and has been extensively applied to silicon and non-silicon materials. He has set up a version of the RCPCD measurement apparatus at the Colorado School of Mines.   Dr. Richard Ahrenkiel also works in photovoltaic device design and modeling. He has specialized in laser scribing of photovoltaic devices during the last year. The laser-scribing work has focused on thin films such as amorphous silicon and transparent conducting oxides.   Dr. Richard Ahrenkiel received a B.S. degree in Engineering Physics and his M.S. and Ph.D degrees in Physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

Research Interest

    Green Energy, Green Chemistry, Sustainability, renewable resources, biomass, biofuel, Green Engineering, green industrial applications, green investments, green process, green energy, biomaterials, nanotechnology, waste management, water treatment, bioreactors, bioprocessing