Ashley Gaulding is a researcher within the Materials Science Center. Her work focuses on tuning nanomaterial heterostructures for both thermoelectric and solar devices. Before NREL, she spent one year as a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working within the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) on inverse opal photonic crystals for CO2 reduction. Her Ph.D. work at the University of Pennsylvania (under Prof. Chris Murray) focused on the investigation of how ligand chemistry affects the electronic properties of semiconductor quantum dots using techniques such as Hall, temperature-dependent Seebeck, and field-effect transistor (FET) measurements. Additionally, she developed a dip-coating method by which to assemble binary nanocrystal superlattices over wafer-scale areas. At NREL, she studies the thermoelectric and opto-electronic properties of low-bandgap quantum dot/perovskite heterostructures as she tunes the separate components to target use in thermoelectric and/or solar devices. 

Quantum dot and low-bandgap perovskite heterostructures

Thermoelectric characterization (Seebeck coefficient, electrical and thermal conductivity)

Opto-electronic characterization (absorption, emission, photocurrent)