Summer Centered: Gabe Jones-Thomson ‘25 Shines a Light on Photovoltaics

As the summer temperatures continue to rise, Gabe Jones-Thomson ‘25 wants to make sure that the solar cells he is studying will be able to take the heat. The prospective chemistry and physics double major is spending his summer working in Professor of Chemistry Alexander Norquist’s on-campus lab, researching halide perovskite solar cells thanks to support from the Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center (KINSC).

The focus of the Norquist chemistry lab is materials science. In particular, they have been studying halide perovskite-based photovoltaics. These solar cells, though having been researched less, show great promise and potential for high efficiency, compared to the more common silicon-based photovoltaics, which have already been extensively studied and optimized.

Jones-Thomson works in Norquist’s lab with four other students: Aldan Dye ‘23, Clare Fleming ‘24, Keqing He ‘24, and Aidan Cosgrove ‘25. Together, they are studying perovskite formation and degradation using copper halides, or how the material responds to elevated environmental conditions, including high temperatures, humidity, and light exposure.

“This is a main focus of our lab, which uses experimental and computational methods to study the formation and stability of new metal halide perovskites,” Jones-Thomson said. “We employ two main synthetic routes: Inverse temperature crystallization (ITC) and anti-solvent vapor diffusion. Processes like ITC are well-suited to investigating new perovskites because they produce both fast growing and high quality crystals.”

Jones-Thomson was thrilled to get involved with on-campus research after only his first year in college. He was particularly excited that his first research experience would be at the intersection of his two intended majors.

“I am thrilled that I will be applying concepts learned in both physics and chemistry classes to research related to photovoltaics,” he said. “For example, this past semester I studied x-ray diffraction in quantum physics, and it is one of the main methods we use to characterize the crystals we synthesize.”

As this is his first research experience, Jones-Thomson has a lot he wishes to learn—from Norquist, his peers, and from researching.

“I have much to learn, from how to operate in a real lab and how a scientific paper gets written, to what it means to be an experimental researcher,” he said. “I hope to gain confidence and familiarity in a high level lab setting, to witness, learn, and contribute to the process of turning daily reactions into scientific insights and published findings, and to build my understanding of solid state chemistry.”

Jones-Thomson hopes to use that growing proficiency in research and chemistry to eventually pursue a doctorate in physics or chemistry, with a focus on clean energy applications. Thus, his work in Norquist’s lab is particularly exciting, as creating perovskites and analyzing their environmental impact brings together all his interests.

“Summer Centered” is a series exploring our students’ campus-supported summer work.