My research interest focuses on developing low-cost perovskite-silicon tandem and earth-abundant catalysts based systems for solar water splitting, as an efficient, clean and cheaper route to hydrogen production.

My research consists of several elements-

1)    Developing earth abundant catalysts based on physical deposition methods for efficient integration with silicon photoelectrodes and current industrial manufacturing process.

2)    Designing low-cost perovskite-silicon tandem and earth-abundant catalysts based systems for high efficiency direct solar hydrogen generation.

3)    Computational modelling of photovoltaic based solar hydrogen generation systems to understand the system configurations and limitations.

4)    Computational modelling of catalysts at semiconductor interfaces and their interactions with light and electrolytes.  This involves getting an atom-level understanding of the electronic processes at interfaces. 

5)    Techno-economic analysis of PV based direct solar hydrogen generation systems for large scale hydrogen generation applications.

Astha Sharma is a research fellow at the solar PV group, School of Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science. She recently finished her PhD within the same group. She is a Physicist and finds it closely tailored to her personality.  Of course, she is extremely passionate about applying physics to Energy applications. She is currently supervised by Dr. Fiona J.Beck, Dr. Kylie Catchpole, and Dr. Siva Karuturi. Her research interest focuses on developing low-cost perovskite-silicon tandem and earth-abundant catalysts based systems for solar water splitting, as an efficient, clean and cheaper route to hydrogen production.

Astha received her MSc. degree in Physics from Savitribai Phule Pune University in 2016. She was awarded INSPIRE scholarship by Department of Science and Technology, Government of India during her Bachelors and Masters (2011-2016).