Claudia Tait

Photo of Claudia Tait

Dr Claudia Tait

Royal Society University Research Fellow

 

 

Research Interests

The fundamental photophysical processes at the basis of the conversion of solar energy to electricity in photovoltaic devices involve species containing unpaired electron spins, from charge-transfer states generated upon light excitation at the interface between donor and acceptor in organic solar cells, to separated charge carriers travelling towards the electrodes and triplet states formed by recombination. Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) spectroscopy selectively probes unpaired electron spins and is used to measure interactions between them or with magnetic nuclei in their vicinity. ESR is therefore uniquely suited for the investigation of materials and devices for photovoltaics and can provide a detailed picture of the molecular environment of the species involved in the photovoltaic process.

The main focus of the research is to advance pulse ESR spectroscopy, in combination with pulsed Electrically Detected Magnetic Resonance (pEDMR), by exploiting advantages provided by shaped microwave pulses and to use it to obtain information on the nature and dynamics of paramagnetic species involved in solar-to-electricity conversion in emerging photovoltaic technologies.

Illustration of Claudia Tait's research

Associated research themes:

Innovative Measurement and Photon Science

Energy and Sustainable Chemistry 

Biography

Claudia E. Tait is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Chemistry Department of the University of Oxford. Her research is focused on the advancement of Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) spectroscopy and its application to improve the current understanding of fundamental spin-dependent processes in materials and devices for photovoltaics.

She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Padova and then obtained her DPhil at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professor Christiane R. Timmel, using a variety of ESR techniques to study the electronic and structural properties of artificial supramolecular porphyrin arrays and biological systems. Her thesis work was awarded with the Bruker Thesis Prize by the ESR group of the Royal Society of Chemistry. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle in the group of Professor Stefan Stoll (2015-2017), and then moved to the Freie Universität Berlin with a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, working with Professor Jan Behrends and Professor Robert Bittl (2017-2020). Her work has been recognised with the John Weil Young Investigator Award (2016) by the International ESR Society.

Publications

Contact

claudia.tait@chem.ox.ac.uk

Research group

Tait Group