In 1991, Baodan Zhao was born in a small town in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province and has been a top student since her childhood.
After the college entrance examination, she was admitted to the School of
Physics, Nanjing University. At the end of her junior year, her academic
performance qualified her for a potential Ph.D. admission to any universities
in mainland China. However, after careful consideration, she decided to pursue
Ph.D. studies abroad and finally became a doctoral student at the Physics Department
of the University of Cambridge. It also provided her the opportunity to do research at the Cavendish Laboratory, one of
the best research institutions for experimental physics in the world.
Baodan started her research in the
field of perovskite-based optoelectronic devices under the guidance of Sir
Richard H. Friend, the Cavendish Professor of Physics, Fellow of the Royal
Society (FRS), and Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).
Since the first demonstration of
perovskite-based LEDs working at room temperature in 2014 by the Friend group, tremendous efforts
have been made to improve electroluminescence efficiency and to understand
the underlying mechanisms. Electroluminescence efficiency has been improved
from ~1% to 12% by Jan. 2018. Baodan's work reported some landmark results by
pushing the electroluminescence efficiencies beyond 20% through the complete
elimination of non-radiative decay processes. 20% electroluminescence
efficiency is a critical milestone for extremely efficient electroluminescent
devices, which allows perovskite-based LEDs to join the league of
state-of-the-art organic LEDs and quantum-dot LEDs. The research was published
as a cover article in Nature Photonics
in 2018.
Additionally, toxicity is one of the main
problems that prevent the large-scale application of perovskite materials.
Baodan's work on lead-tin binary-metal perovskites was one of the very early
demonstrations of high-performance photovoltaic devices based on tin-rich
halide perovskites.
Now, Baodan has returned to China to
continue her scientific research at the College of Optical Science and
Engineering in Zhejiang University. Regarding future research, she mentioned
that she would like to further explore device degradation mechanisms and realize
operationally-stable perovskite light-emitting diodes.
