ATLANTA, October 15 — Researchers at Georgia Tech and Albany State University have received a $1.3 million award through the National Science Foundation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Excellence in Research program to develop scalable manufacturing methods for perovskite thin films. The three-year project, titled ‘Close-Space Sublimation for Scalable Perovskite Optoelectronics Manufacturing’, is led by Liqiu Zheng, assistant professor of physics at Albany State, and Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, associate professor and Goizueta Junior Faculty Chair in Georgia Tech’s School of Materials Science and Engineering and School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
The award builds on initial work supported by Georgia Tech’s Research Collaboration Forum Seed Grant Program and was among the projects funded during the forum’s inaugural cycle. This reflects a central goal of the Research Collaboration Forum: helping promising collaborations move from initial conversations to sustained research partnerships with national impact.
The grant will expand Albany State’s research capabilities by supporting new thin-film manufacturing and characterization equipment, accelerating materials discovery and building long-term research capacity. Students at both institutions will gain hands-on learning opportunities through exchanges that provide access to research facilities, expertise, and joint study of thin-film growth, structure, and device performance. In plain terms, the team is working to make the production of perovskite materials — which show promise for efficient solar cells and LEDs — faster, less wasteful, and easier to scale up for real-world use.
Think of it like refining a recipe so you can bake thousands of perfect loaves instead of just a few, using less flour and energy while maintaining quality. The practical upshot is that this research could help lower barriers to manufacturing next-generation optoelectronic devices, potentially making clean energy technologies more accessible and affordable.
The National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency with a mission to promote scientific progress, funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research at U.S. colleges and universities. With an annual budget of about $8.75 billion in fiscal year 2026, the NSF supports fundamental research across non-medical fields of science and engineering, including the materials science and physics central to this project.
NSF’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Excellence in Research program specifically aims to strengthen research infrastructure and capacity at HBCUs, aligning with broader efforts to expand participation in science and engineering. As the project progresses over the next three years, researchers will focus on optimizing close-space sublimation techniques to improve the uniformity and efficiency of perovskite thin-film deposition. Success could advance not only academic understanding but also pathways toward commercial-scale production of perovskite-based technologies.
