Dr. Klaus Lips
Deputy director of the Institut Silizium-Photovoltaik in the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie
Klaus Lips, born in 1962 in the Huguenot's village of Carlsdorf-Hofgeismar (Northern Hessen) and grown up in the Netherlands, studied physics in Leiden (NL) as well as in Marburg / Lahn. He did a doctorate in 1994 in Marburg / Lahn with Prof. Dr. Walther Fuhs about “Loss mechanisms in amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) absorber layers of solar cells” for which was distinguished with the “Geiger” award in 2006. After the doctorate he changed to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, USA studying “defect relaxation of intrinsic and extrinsic defects in a-Si:H.
In 1996 he changed to the Hahn-Meitner-Institut in Berlin-Adlershof and built up a research team which deals with the characterization of silicon thin-film solar cells by means of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR, sometimes also referred to as ESR). From 2005 to 2006 he was provisional head of the department Silizium-Photovoltaik. Since 2006 he leads two research groups that deal with defects in solid-state materials as well as with the development of novel back-contacted crystalline silicon solar cell. Klaus Lips is currently deputy director of the Institut Silizium-Photovoltaik in the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie.
Klaus Lips is married with the judge Bettina Lips (born Weidinger) and has four lovely daughters Katinka, Annika, Cleo and Marie. In his spare time Klaus Lips is a passionate marathon runner and writes music reviews for different cultural magazines.
Current research
The main focus of the research projects of Klaus Lips lies in the area of the charge carrier and defect dynamics in thin-film silicon for photovoltaic applications.
Klaus Lips is founder and spokesman of the interdisciplinary BMBF network "EPR-Solar" which is devoted to investigate defect states and their creation mechanism in thin-film silicon using EPR-based methods with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. The aim of “EPR-Solar” is the complete identification of defects in amorphous and microcrystalline silicon as well as the clarification of the microscopic mechanism of the so-called Staebler-Wronski effect which is responsible for the degradation of the electronic properties of amorphous silicon.
With the fusion of BESSY II and Hahn-Meitner-Institut a novel Terahertz EPR Spectrometer was constructed and taken into operation at BESSY II which allows the investigation of spin systems with extremely high zero field coupling. In addition, a novel 263 GHz pulsed EPR-Spectrometer is put into operation in the end of 2009. With this new instrument, the EPR center at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin will have worldwide unique capabilities for the research of spin systems in solar materials.
Contact: Dr. Klaus Lips, tel. +49 (030) 8062-1353, e-mail: lips(at)helmholtz-berlin.de, web: www.helmholtz-berlin.de/people/lips/