Rahul Dewan - Jacobs University

Acknowledgement
• I would like to acknowledge my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Dietmar Knipp, for providing
me the opportunity to work in this exciting project. His continued encouragement
and support has been pivotal in the completion of this thesis project. He has
shown me how to do research and how to think like a researcher. Most of what I
know about solar cells, optics and device physics has been an accumulation from
myriad of discussions I had with Prof. Knipp in lectures, group meetings, coffee
meetings or mostly my spontaneously dropping by his office with a question in
my mind. I thank him for sharing his knowledge with me.
• I would also like to acknowledge Prof. Dr. Werner Begholz for being a reviewer
of this thesis. I thank him for his insightful discussions on photovoltaics and
microelectronics in lectures and in meetings.
• I thank Prof. Dr. Carsten Agert from NEXT ENERGY for giving his consent to
be a member of my dissertation committee. I thank him for his valuable time in
reviewing this thesis.
• I would like to acknowledge financial support from Embedded Microsystems Bremen
and Jacobs University Bremen for the duration of my work in this thesis
project. I also thank the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for their
travel grant to attend the 5th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion
2010 in Valencia, Spain.
• I’ve been associated with the Electronics Devices and Nanophotonics Laboratory
for a little more than 5 years now. I thank all my colleagues from my group
who have provided me valuable inputs from many discussions regarding this
project. Special thanks to Marko Marinkovic, Vladislav Jovanov, Ivaylo Vasilev,
Darin Madzharov, Andrey Raykov, Sahar Arabi, Ujwol Palanchoke and Rion Parsons
for our fruitful collaborations in many projects.
• For the many helpful discussion, specially at the beginning of the project, I greatly
acknowledge the support of IEK5-Photovoltaics, Research Center Jülich. I thank
Prof. Dr. Uwe Rau for his kind invitation to visit Jülich and for sharing his views
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