Zeyad Elsayed is undertaking his PhD in the PV Materials & Devices research group at CREST, supervised by Dr Jake Bowers and Prof Mike Walls. His work focuses on improving the efficiency and reproducibility of CdTe-based photovoltaic devices.
Part of the programme of structured support to Early Careers Researchers in the field of applied photovoltaics provided by the Sustainable Solar Energy Systems Network Plus, a UKRI-funded project led by Loughborough University, is the SES Network Industrial Secondment Fund. This scheme awarded grant support of £5,000 to cover all travel and associated costs for Zeyad to make a short research secondment, hosted by collaborators in the USA.
During May and June 2026, Zeyad was able to undertake a four-day placement at First Solar Inc. including visits to their main campus and R&D manufacturing facilities, followed by one week at the University of Toledo’s Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization.
At First Solar, Zeyad was given a detailed tour of their R&D manufacturing facility by an R&D engineer, covering the main stages of device fabrication, giving him a better understanding of the significance of small improvements in device efficiency when translated to large-scale manufacturing, and also embedding the perspective that in an industrial manufacturing environment, any process modification must be repeatable, predictable and compatible with defined process-control limits.
Zeyad highlights clear benefits of the secondment:
The secondment provided a valuable opportunity to gain direct experience of both industrial scale CdTe-based photovoltaic manufacturing and research-led thin film device fabrication.
The visit to First Solar strengthened my understanding of the process control, reproducibility and manufacturability requirements needed to translate laboratory-scale efficiency improvements into industrially relevant outcomes. The work at the University of Toledo expanded my practical experience in CdSe device fabrication and characterisation, while also providing new perspectives on interface design and device analysis.”
This reinforced the relevance of my PhD research, where incremental improvements in absorber quality, activation conditions and interface performance can have a meaningful positive impact. It has influenced how I assess experimental changes and has reinforced the need to distinguish genuine process improvements from isolated high-performing devices.
The secondment provided a platform to build further collaboration between researchers at CREST and both First Solar and the University of Toledo, some of which are already taking place.
