e-mail me: first name + last initial at eecs dot berkeley dot edu

about

I'm a first year graduate student in the Electrical Engineering department at UC Berkeley working with the Yablonovitch group. Previously, I was an undergrad at MIT, where I researched with the Buonassisi group. My current research focuses on improving solar cell efficiency with metal optics.

past projects

• Silicon Micro/Nanowires: We developed a technique based on manipulating metal impurities in bulk silicon through solubility and diffusion to seed controlled patterns of metal catalysts for Si wire growth.
  
  Paper: Seeding of Silicon Wire Growth by Out-Diffused Metal Precipitates.
  V. Ganapati, D.P. Fenning, M.I. Bertoni, C.E. Kendrick, A.E. Fecych, J.M. Redwing, T. Buonassisi. Small, 2011.

• Infrared Birefringence Imaging: Upon applying stress, photoelastic materials (such as silicon), become birefringent. We used infrared birefringence imaging to evaluate the mechanical strength of multicrystalline silicon wafers. This work was done in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials in Halle, Germany, where I spent a summer through the support of MISTI-Germany.
  
  Paper: Infrared birefringence imaging of residual stress and bulk defects in multicrystalline silicon.
  V. Ganapati, S. Schoenfelder, S. Castellanos, S. Oener, R. Koepge, A. Sampson, M.A. Marcus, B. Lai, H. Morhenn, G. Hahn, J. Bagdahn, T. Buonassisi. Journal of Applied Physics, 2010.

links

• Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Fellowship
• Light-Material Interactions in Energy Conversion
• Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science