Timofey Golubev's website
I am a Research Scientist at ThermoAnalytics working on R&D for multiphysics problems such as coupled heat and moisture transfer and thermal-electrical modeling of electric vehicles, batteries, and photovoltaics. I recently earned my Ph.D. in Physics at Michigan State University with my thesis research focused on computational modeling of photovoltaics including device physics, temperature-induced losses, and predictive models of PV energy production based on environmental conditions. I have also led the research efforts and contributed to the development of a commercial web-based software (PV SoilSayer) for solar plant energy production forecasting and cleaning schedule optimization based on local weather datasets and environmental conditions. Here you can find out more about my experience and research interests.
Dissertation Research:
Drift-Diffusion Modeling of Photovoltaic Devices
A portion of my doctoral research has been focused on drift-diffusion modeling of photovoltaic devices such as organic and perovskite solar cells. The models can also be applied to other semiconductor devices such as organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs).
Improving Photovoltaic System Soiling Loss Predictions
I have developed PV energy production forcasting models that consider environmental conditions and soiling losses. In a collaboration with a PV startup, the models were integrated with open-source PV performance models and commercial algorithms for PV system cleaning schedule optimization to create a brand-new commercial software for soiling loss prediction and cleaning schedule optimization (PV SoilSayer). Additionally, I explored machine learning approaches to soiling modeling.
Coupled Thermal-Electrical Modeling of PV Systems
I developed a coupled thermal-electrical PV modeling approach involving integrating temperature-dependent equivalent circuit solar cell models with a commercial heat-transfer software (TAITherm). I applied this approach for evaluating the electricity production of electric vehicle integrated photovoltaics.
Past Computational Work:
Parallelized Interactive Molecular Dynamics
I significantly contributed to a group project of developing a parallelized (with MPI) interactive real time simulation of molecular dynamics using the Lennard Jones potential, meant for use on a Raspberry Pi supercomputer with an XBox One controller. The animation shows a parallelized (with domain decomposition to 5 processors) calculation for a moving repulsive electric potential where the colors represent the processor on which those particle's motions are calculated.
Molecular Dynamics: Melting of Argon
I have written object-oriented 3D molecular dynamics code in C++ which simulates the melting of argon using various thermodynamic ensembles and visualized this process with Ovito.
Structural Control of Light
As an undergraduate at Missouri S&T, I worked on computational light propagation studies such as the diffusion of light through waveguides and optical properties of a two dimensional aperiodic array of microcavities.
Past Experimental Research:
I have worked on experimental condensed matter projects including perovskite solar cells, nanowire exfoliation, and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) characterization of 2D transition metal dichalcogenides.
Molecular Beam Epitaxy
I worked on molecular beam epitaxy growth of WSe2 and SnSe2 monolayers.
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Mechanical and Liquid Exfoliation
I have worked on mechanical (with use of scotch tape) and liquid (via sonication) exfoliation of transition metal nanowires and also verfied the techniques on MoS2 and Bi2Se3.
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Layers for Perovskite Solar Cells
During my first summer of experimental work in graduate school, I experimented with techniques of spin coating to achieve higher quality layers for thin-film perovskite solar cells.
Read MorePublications and Links
T. Golubev, D. Liu, R. Lunt, P. Duxbury. Understanding the impact of C60 at the interface of perovskite solar cells via drift-diffusion modeling. AIP Advances 9 (3), 035026
R. Sarma, T. Golubev, A. Yamilov, and H. Cao, Control of light diffusion in a disordered photonic waveguide. Appl. Phys. Lett. 105, 041104 (2014)
F. Zhou, T. Golubev, B. Hwang, C. Ruan, P. Duxbury, C. Malliakas, M. Kanatzidis. APS March Meeting 2015, abstract #W21.014