Dr. Vaqueiro Contreras completed her PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 2018 at the University of Manchester after being awarded the “CONACyT-Manchester Scholarship of Quality Postgraduate Studies”. She worked at the National Graphene Institute where she worked on the identification of graphene oxide films as passivation material for silicon solar cells and its underlaying mechanism. During her PhD she was also focusing on the identification of light element impurities responsible for high minority carrier recombination in silicon. Her findings on the recombination mechanisms relating C-O-H interactions in silicon have proven to be of high impact to the solar cell industry as hydrogen introduction in silicon is mostly recognized as advantageous. Similarly, her work led to the first direct observation of the B-O complex responsible for the light induced degradation which has been a problem for more than four decades in solar cells and leading to up to 2% absolute efficiency drop.
In 2018, Dr. Vaqueiro joined School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering (SPREE) at UNSW Australia as a postdoctoral researcher working on advanced hydrogenation for industrial applications. In 2020, she joined Prof. Bram hoex’s group after being awarded an ACAP Postdoctoral fellowship to work on the applications and understanding of graphene oxide multilayer films on solar cells.
Websites
UNSW Hoex Group 