Diego Colombara is a Marie Curie cofund research fellow at INL, Quantum Materials Science and Technology. His research at INL is devoted to the development of template-free micropattern electrodeposition, with exploratory applications in photovoltaics (Nanostructured Solar Cells Laboratory) and water splitting (Nano Materials for Energy Laboratory).

Diego’s interests are on functional materials and include non-molecular solid state chemistry (multinary phase formation, defect chemistry, diffusion phenomena), thermodynamics and kinetics of solid-gas equilibria (phase stability and compatibility, reactive annealing, chemical vapour transport) and (photo)electrochemical processes (analytical and synthetic routes for thin films, microstructures and surfaces and energy conversion).

Diego obtained his Chemistry degree from the University of Genova (Italy) with a Master project carried out under Erasmus at Cranfield University (UK). Diego was awarded his PhD by the University of Bath (UK) in 2012 with a thesis on chalcogenides for solar cells supervised by Prof. Laurie Peter. He then moved to Luxembourg, where he spent three years as a postdoc on the FP7 project SCALENANO, focusing on photoelectrochemistry as a predictive and monitoring tool for solar cell performance. In 2015 he received a CORE Junior grant by the FNR Luxembourg allowing him to be the principal investigator of GALDOCHS, a two-year project on gas phase alkali doping of chalcogenide semiconductors. GALDOCHS has involved five partners from Luxembourg, Italy, France, UK and Switzerland and has helped to unveil some fundamental consequences of extrinsic doping in Cu(In,Ga)Se2, the world’s most efficient thin film photovoltaic technology.

• Diego Colombara, Florian Werner, Torsten Schwarz, Ingrid Cañero Infante, Yves Fleming, Nathalie Valle, Conrad Spindler, Erica Vacchieri, Germain Rey, Mael Guennou, Muriel Bouttemy, Alba Garzón Manjón, Inmaculada Peral Alonso, Michele Melchiorre, Brahime El Adib, Baptiste Gault, Dierk Raabe, Phillip J. Dale & Susanne Siebentritt
  Sodium enhances indium-gallium interdiffusion in copper indium gallium diselenide photovoltaic absorbers
  Nature Communications volume 9, Article number: 826 (2018)

• D. Colombara, U. Berner, A. Ciccioli, J. C. Malaquias, T. Bertram, A. Crossay, M. Schöneich, H. J. Meadows, D. Regesch, S. Delsante, G. Gigli, N. Valle, J. Guillot, B. E. Adib, P. Grysan and P. J. Dale.
  Deliberate and Accidental Gas-Phase Alkali Doping of Chalcogenide Semiconductors: Cu(In,Ga)Se2
  Nature Scientific Reports, 2017, 7, 43266.

• D. Colombara, E. V. C. Robert, A. Crossay, A. Taylor, M. Guennou, M. Arasimowicz, J. C. B. Malaquias, R. Djemour and P. J. Dale.
  Quantification of surface ZnSe in Cu2ZnSnSe4-based solar cells by analysis of the spectral response
  Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, 2014, 123, 220–227.

• D. Colombara, P. J. Dale, G. P. Kissling, L. M. Peter and S. Tombolato.
  PEC Screening of Solar Cell Absorber Layers: Electron Transfer Kinetics and Surface Stabilization.
  J. Phys. Chem. C, 2016, 120, 15956–15965.