Thin film perovskite solar cells may be the key to low-cost improvements in energy conversion. $1M from DOE’s Solar Energy Technology Technologies Office will help us find out.
Conn Center for Renewable Energy Research
The Conn Center conducts and facilitates R&D on potentially commercializable renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. The Center’s main objective is to foster development of transformational concepts and accelerate the translation of technology concepts from the lab to pre-commercial scale.
UofL established the Conn Center for Renewable Energy Research at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering in 2009 in honor of major donors Hank and Rebecca Conn. Over the past 10 years, the Conn Center has established leadership, research, support and policy development in renewable energy.
The center advances the goal of renewable energy and promotes technologies, practices, and programs that increase efficiency for energy utilization. The center promotes partnerships among colleges and universities, private industries, and non-profit organizations to actively pursue federally and privately funded research and development resources that are dedicated to renewable energy solutions. Through innovative R&D at an accelerated pace and development of Kentucky’s workforce and renewable resources, the Center’s ongoing goal is to seek outcomes that enhance global energy security, maintain US technological leadership, and improve high-tech manufacturing activity in Kentucky.
Research themes include Solar Manufacturing, Solar Fuels, Biofuels & Biomass Conversions, Energy Storage, Advanced Energy Materials, Materials Characterization, and Energy Efficiency & Conservation. Conn Center employs top-notch scientists and engineers as theme leaders for directing these research thrusts and to enable collaborations with faculty researchers and industry partners worldwide.
Contact Us
conn.center@louisville.edu
502-852-8597
Endowment to support our work
Grants for federal/state research contracts per year
Industry funding/service contracts per year
Renewable Energy Engineer Wins Prestigious NSF CAREER AwardOur Faculty and Staff“One of the things I tell my students is we can do solar on a rooftop or at a utility, but if you want to fly a jet on completely clean and green energy, how do you do that?”
- Dr. Josh Spurgeon, Conn Center
Featured Publication
We have developed a lithography free technique for the fabrication of two-dimensional (2D) material based heterostructures. We fabricated graphene-WS2 heterostructured devices using a transmission electron microscope grid as a shadow mask and their electrical transport characteristics were studied by electrical and magneto transport measurements.
Recently it has been proposed that the magnetic coupling among magnetic dopants in diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) and doped transition metal oxides (TMOs) has a considerable local contribution attributed to the magnetic moment, , induced by the dopants on their first nearest neighboring (1nn) anions.
FEATURED CAPABILITY Materials & Energy Technologies (MET) Service Center
The MET Service Center at Conn Center provides several unique, advanced tools and expertise for advanced materials, their comprehensive characterization, prototyping of energy devices, and their testing.
The Conn Center serves undergraduate and graduate researchers, but also the surrounding community at large, including local middle and high school students. We offer lab tours, guest lectures, and mentored research projects.
Leigh Ann Conn Prize for Renewable Energy
The University of Louisville awards the Leigh Ann Conn Prize for Renewable Energy to acknowledge the ideas and achievements in research related to the science, engineering, technology, and commercialization of renewable energy.