Alexander Urban, Principal Investigator of SolTech at Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU, Munich), has received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). His project, entitled PINNACLE, focuses on lead halide-based perovskites, a material with excellent properties for applications in solar energy conversion. The basic idea is to use a new method for the synthesis of perovskite nanocrystals that would improve their stability, and allow their optical, electrical and photonic properties to be more easily determined.
Alexander Urban studied Physics at the University of Karlsruhe and at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. In 2010 he obtained his PhD at LMU in the group of Jochen Feldmann. From 2011 until 2014 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Rice University in Houston (Texas), before building up his own research group at LMU in Munich.