Nam-Gyu Park

Nam-Gyu Park (; born 3 September 1960 ) is a South Korean chemical engineer. He is Distinguished Professor and Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)-Fellow at School of Chemical Engineering, SKKU. His research focuses on high efficiency mesoscopic nanostructured solar cells. He announced the beginning of perovskite photovoltaic research by first reporting long-term stable perovskite solar cells in 2012, and is called the pioneer of practical perovskite solar cells.

Career He is from Masan, South Gyeongsang Province (now Changwon). When he was young, his father was transferred to the Busan branch of Korea Electric Power Corporation, so he moved to Busan and received his elementary, middle, and high school education there. As a teenager, he wanted to be an artist or architect, but he couldn't due to opposition from his music teacher. Upon entering the Department of Chemistry Education at Seoul National University in 1981, he joined the 9th Infantry Division (also known as the White Horse Division) and served for two years and seven months. He then attended the Department of Chemistry at Seoul National University and became a student of Professor Choy Jin-ho. At first, he wanted to study superconductors, but changed his direction to perovskite research at the suggestion of the professor. In February 1992, he earned his master's degree in inorganic chemistry from Seoul National University graduate school, and in February 1995, he earned his doctorate in inorganic chemistry through a paper titled "Synthesis and physico-chemical properties of 2-dimensional inorganic solids and their intercalation compounds". However, dye-sensitized solar cells have some disadvantages in that they are economical but have limited energy conversion efficiency. Meanwhile, at a solar cell-related conference held in Switzerland in 2007, Tsutomu Miyasaka, a professor at Toin University of Yokohama, Japan, presented a presentation on perovskite solar cells. In a paper published in 2009, Tsutomu Miyasaka first presented a dye-sensitized solar cell model with perovskite structural materials, but it was implemented in a liquid state, making it less stable and only 3.8% efficient, so it received little attention.

When he was appointed as a professor at Sungkyunkwan University in July 2009, In August 2012, he developed the world's first solar cell made of solid perovskite with Professor Michael Grätzel at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. The solid perovskite solar cell he developed recorded the highest efficiency at the time of 9.7%, and the efficiency remained constant even when exposed to the outside for more than 500 hours. Published in the journal Scientific Reports, a sister paper of Nature, it was considered the first paper on a stable and efficient solid perovskite solar cell. Since then, it has been evaluated as providing an opportunity to conduct research on perovskite solar cells around the world. His perovskite solar cell research achievements gained international recognition by winning the British Rank Prizes for Optoelectronics in 2022, the Italian ENI award for Energy Frontiers in 2024, and the German Humboldt Research Award in 2025. In 2023, he was the only South Korean scientists and technicians to be invited to the Nobel Symposium hosted by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to present solid perovskite solar cells.

Selected awards and honors Aug. 2008: KIST Award of Month, KIST Oct. 2008: Scientist of the Month, Ministry of Science and ICT and National Research Foundation of Korea Oct. 2008: Kyunhang Electricity and Energy Award, Korean Government 2009: Best KIST Award, KIST 2010: DuPont Science and Technology Award, DuPont Korea 2013: 100 National Outstanding Awards, Korean Government 2014: MRS Outstanding Research Award, MRS 2014: WCPEC-6 Paper Award, Kyoto, Japan 2015: Hamakawa Award of PVSEC, Busan, Korea 2016: Dukmyung KAST Engineering Award, KAST 2017: Clarivate Citation Laureates, Clarivate Analytics 2018: ACS-KCS Excellence Award, American Chemical Society 2018: Lee Hsun Lecture Award, Chinese Academy of Sciences 2018: Ho-Am Prize in Engineering, Ho-Am Foundation 2018: Prime Minister Award, No. 6912 2018: Minister of Science Award, No. 25595 2018: Scientist of the Year Award 2019: Asian Scientist 100, Asian Scientist 2020: 1st Jin-Ho Choy Academic Award, Korean Chemical Society 2021: NANO 2022: Rank Prizes for Optoelectronics 2023: Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Materials Science - 2023 2024: Top Scientist and Technologist Award of Korea 2024: ENI award for Energy Frontiers 2024: NAEK Award, National Academy of Engineering of Korea 2025: Humboldt Research Award

Patents Perovskite Solar Cell

Books "Organic-Inorganic Halide Perovskite Photovoltaics" Ed. N.-G. Park, M. Gratzel and T. Miyasaka, Springer (2016), ISBN 978-3-319-35114-8 "High Efficiency Mesoscopic Organometal Halide Perovskite Solar Cells" in "Unconventional Thin Film Photovoltaics", Ed. Enrico Da Como, Filippo De Angelis, Henry Snaith, Alison Walker, Royal Society of Chemistry (2016), ISBN 978-1-78262-293-2 "Sensitized Mesoscopic Solar Cells" McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology (2015), ISBN 978-0-07-183576-3 "Perovskite Solar Cell" in "Advanced concepts in photovoltaics", Ed. A.J. Nozik, Royal Society of Chemistry (2014), ISBN 978-1-84973-591-9 "Advanced technologies of perovskite-based thin film solar cells" in "Recent development of perovskite thin film solar cells", Ed. T. Miyasaka and H. Segawa, CMC Publishing Co., Japan (2014), ISBN 978-4- 907837-25-9 C3058. "Perovskite-based solid state hybrid solar cells" in "Trends in Advanced Sensitized and Organic Solar Cells", Ed. T. Miyasaka, CMC Publishing Co, Japan (2012), ISBN 978-4-7813-0620-9 C3054 "Metal oxide nanostructures and their photovoltaic applications" in "Metal Oxide Nanostructures and Their Applications", Ed. Ahmad Umar, American Science Publisher, USA (2009), ISBN 1-58883-170-1 "Research trend of dye-sensitized solar cell in Korea" in "Recent Advances in Research and Development for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells II", Ed. H. Arakawa, CMC Publishing Co, Japan (2007), ISBN 978-4- 88231-665-7 C3054

Publications Scalable fabrication and coating methods for perovskite solar cells and solar modules, Nature Materials Review 5, 333–350 (2020) High-Efficiency Perovskite Solar Cells, Chem. Rev. 120, 7867−7918 (2020) Multifunctional Chemical Linker Imidazoleacetic Acid Hydrochloride for 21% Efficient and Stable Planar Perovskite Solar Cells, Adv. Mater. 1902902 (2019) Bi-facial stamping for High Efficiency Perovskite Solar Cells, Energy & Environ. Sci., 12, 308 (2018) Printable organometallic perovskite enables large-area, low-dose X-ray imaging, Nature, 550, 87 (2017) Towards stable and commercially available perovskite solar cells, Nature Energy, 1, 16152 (2016) Water photolysis at 12.3% efficiency via perovskite photovoltaics and Earth-abundant catalysts, Science, 26, 1593 (2014) Mechanism of carrier accumulation in perovskite thin-absorber solar cells, Nature Communications, 4, 2242 (2013) Organometal perovskite light absorbers toward a 20% efficiency low-cost solid-state mesoscopic solar cell, J. Phys. Chem. Letters, 4, 2423 (2013) (Cover) Lead iodide perovskite sensitized all-solid-state submicron thin film mesoscopic solar cell with efficiency exceeding 9%, Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing), 2, 591 (2012) Highly cited article 6.5% efficient perovskite quantum-dot-sensitized solar cell, Nanoscale, 3, 4088 (2011) Selective positioning of organic dyes in a mesoporous inorganic oxide films, Nature Materials, 8, 665 (2009)