Michael Grätzel elected member of Order Pour le Mérite
Michael Grätzel. Credit: Alain Herzog (EPFL)
Professor Michael Grätzel at EPFL’s School of Basic Sciences has been elected to the German Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and the Arts.
Founded in 1842, the Order Pour le Mérite is Germany’s highest honor for outstanding contributions in science and the arts. Limited to a maximum of 40 members in Germany and 40 abroad, the Order has counted figures like Albert Einstein and Max Planck among its ranks. Today, laureates such as Jean-Marie Lehn and Emmanuelle Charpentier are among its distinguished members.
This year, the Order has elected Professor Michael Grätzel (EPFL), one of the most influential chemists of our time, in recognition of his pioneering contributions to photovoltaics.
About Professor Michael Grätzel
Professor Grätzel is world-renowned for inventing the first dye-sensitive solar cell in 1991 with chemist Brian O’Reagan. Just as plants use chlorophyll to turn sunlight into energy, the “Grätzel cells” use industrial dyes, pigments or quantum dots stimulated by sunlight to transmit an electrical charge. Within fifteen years of the original invention, Grätzel evolved the cells into an applied technology that is now being developed in universities and companies worldwide.
Having discovered molecular photovoltaics, Grätzel’s research has focused on designing mesoscopic photosystems based on molecular light harvesters that convert light very efficiently to electricity. He is credited with moving the photovoltaic field beyond the principle of light absorption via diodes to the molecular level. Recently his research engendered a second revolution in photovoltaics prompting the advent of perovskite solar cells. In just a single decade, their power-conversion efficiency increased from 3% to over 26%, rivaling and even exceeding the performance of conventional photovoltaics.
Grätzel also applied his innovative mesoscopic design concept to enhance the power of lithium-ion batteries and to create photoelectrochemical cells that efficiently generate chemical fuels from sunlight, opening a new path to provide future sources of renewable energy that can be stored.
Grätzel currently directs EPFL’s Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces within the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC). His more than 1,800 publications have received over 500,000 citations, and have an h-index of 313. In 2019, Stanford University ranked Grätzel first of 100,000 top scientists across all fields. According to the Web of Science, he is currently the most highly cited chemist in the world.