Michael Grätzel wins Green Carbon Outstanding Achievement Award
Michael Grätzel. Credit: Alain Herzog (EPFL)
Professor Michael Grätzel at EPFL’s School of Basic Sciences has won the 2025 Green Carbon Outstanding Achievement Award
The Green Carbon Outstanding Achievement Award, presented by the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the journal Green Carbon, honors internationally leading scientists whose work has advanced green and sustainable energy technologies. The award recognizes "scientists who have made milestone contributions in the field of green and low-carbon research. It seeks to inspire global researchers to engage in the study and innovation of green carbon science, providing scientific support for addressing global climate change and promoting sustainable development."
Professor Michael Grätzel at EPFL is one of three top scientists who have been presented with the Green Carbon Outstanding Achievement Award 2025.
According to the official award statement, Professor Grätzel is recognized as one of the most influential chemists in the world and a pioneering leader in third generation photovoltaics.
The citation reads: "Prof. Michael Grätzel is undoubtedly one of the most influential chemists in the world today, a pioneering leader in the field of third-generation photovoltaics. His scientific career represents a glorious history of continuous innovation and breakthroughs. From dye-sensitized solar cells to perovskite solar cells, he has twice revolutionized global photovoltaic technology. He initiated new research avenues and is consistently driving innovation in solar energy conversion technology."
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.