Dr Yvonne Ying Woan Soon

yingwoan.soon@ubd.edu.bn

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science



          

Dr Yvonne Soon is an assistant professor at Applied Physics department, Faculty of Science, Universiti Brunei Darussalam since 2014.

She completed her PhD in Chemistry research at Imperial College London, UK with the photochemistry group led by Professor James Durrant. The expertise of the group stems from the Nobel Laurate Lord G. Porter who is the PhD supervisor of Prof Durrant. The focus of the PhD research of Dr Yvonne was on photophysical and photochemical study of organic solar cells.

During her time at Imperial College, she has industrial collaboration with the multinational chemical company, Solvay S.A., which funded the research group for a project on 'The stability of organic solar cell'. In addition, she has fair exposure at numerous international conferences including a talk given at HOPV conference at Sweden.

In her earlier education, she has been awarded a Master by Research (MRes) with merit in Nanomaterials from Imperial College London while her undergraduate degree in Physics was from Oxford University.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Organic solar cells, Photophysical study, Transient absorption study, Photostability

FUTURE PROJECTS

Stability of polymer solar cells.

Conjugated semiconducting polymers are promising materials for low cost solar cell due to the ease of large scale production with roll to roll printing. However these materials require more study to determine their photochemical stability and thermal stability for use in organic solar cells.


Applications Invited

Characterization of photoactive materials for organic solar cells.

Explore and optimise different donor-acceptor pairs or even ternary blends for use in the photoactive layer of organic solar cells. An advanced technique to probe the photophysics of the active layer is using Transient Absorption Spectroscopy (TAS).


Applications Invited

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Muslim, Noormariah; Soon, Y.W.; Lim, C.M.; Voo, N.Y.; Influence of sputtering power on properties of titanium thin films deposited by rf magnetron sputtering, ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 10, 16, 7184, 2015.
Soon, Ying W; Shoaee, Safa; Ashraf, Raja Shahid; Bronstein, Hugo; Schroeder, Bob C; Zhang, Weimin; Fei, Zhuping; Heeney, Martin; McCulloch, Iain; Durrant, James R; Material Crystallinity as a Determinant of Triplet Dynamics and Oxygen Quenching in Donor Polymers for Organic Photovoltaic Devices, Advanced Functional Materials, 24, 10, 1474-1482, 2014.
Huang, Zhenggang; Fregoso, Elisa Collado; Dimitrov, Stoichko; Tuladhar, Pabitra Shakya; Soon, Ying Woan; Bronstein, Hugo; Meager, Iain; Zhang, Weimin; McCulloch, Iain; Durrant, James R; Optimisation of diketopyrrolopyrrole: fullerene solar cell performance through control of polymer molecular weight and thermal annealing Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2, 45, 19282-19289, 2014.
Razzell-Hollis, Joseph; Wade, Jessica; Tsoi, Wing Chung; Soon, Ying; Durrant, James; Kim, Ji-Seon; Photochemical stability of high efficiency PTB7: PC 70 BM solar cell blends, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2, 47, 20189-20195, 2014.
Soon, Ying W; Cho, Hoduk; Low, Jonathan; Bronstein, Hugo; McCulloch, Iain; Durrant, James R; Correlating triplet yield, singlet oxygen generation and photochemical stability in polymer/fullerene blend films, Chemical Communications, 49, 13, 1291-1293, 2013.

TOP PUBLICATIONS

Soon, Ying W; Cho, Hoduk; Low, Jonathan; Bronstein, Hugo; McCulloch, Iain; Durrant, James R; Correlating triplet yield, singlet oxygen generation and photochemical stability in polymer/fullerene blend films, Chemical Communications, 49, 13, 1291-1293, 2013.
Bronstein, Hugo; Collado‐Fregoso, Elisa; Hadipour, Afshin; Soon, Ying W; Huang, Zhenggang; Dimitrov, Stoichko D; Ashraf, Raja Shahid; Rand, Barry P; Watkins, Scott E; Tuladhar, Pabitra S; Thieno [3, 2‐b] thiophene‐diketopyrrolopyrrole Containing Polymers for Inverted Solar Cells Devices with High Short Circuit Currents, Advanced Functional Materials, 23, 45, 5647-5654, 2013.
Tracey M Clarke, Amy Ballantyne, Safa Shoaee, Ying W Soon, Warren Duffy, Martin Heeney, Iain McCulloch, Jenny Nelson, James R Durrant, Analysis of Charge Photogeneration as a Key Determinant of Photocurrent Density in Polymer: Fullerene Solar Cells’ Advanced Materials 2010, 22, 5287.
Ying W Soon, Tracey M Clarke, Weimin Zhang, Tiziano Agostinelli, James Kirkpatrick, Clare Dyer-Smith, Iain McCulloch, Jenny Nelson, James R Durrant, Energy versus electron transfer in organic solar cells’ Chemical Science 2011, 2, 1111.
Biniek, Laure; Schroeder, Bob C; Donaghey, Jenny E; Yaacobi-Gross, Nir; Ashraf, Raja Shahid; Soon, Ying W; Nielsen, Christian B; Durrant, James R; Anthopoulos, Thomas D; McCulloch, Iain; New Fused Bis-Thienobenzothienothiophene Copolymers and Their Use in Organic Solar Cells and Transistors, Macromolecules, 46, 3, 727-735, 2013.

GRANT DETAILS

Grant type: URG, Grant Number: PNC2/2/RG/1(313), Project Title: Probing charge accumulation and interfacial electric fields in mesoscopic solar cells using electro-absorption spectroscopy

Industry, Institute, or Organisation Collaboration

Collaboration during PhD at a multinational company, Solvay S.A., Belgium which funded the Durrant and McCulloch groups in Imperial College London for a 3-years research project on the ‘Stability of Organic Solar Cell’. This project has four main research areas, and I am a lead investigator in one of the areas focussing on the studies of photochemical stability.

SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, or ACADEMIC BENEFITS

Towards commercialization of organic solar cells.