The road to decarbonization will be paved with many tradeoffs.

Sreyas Chintapalli, a PhD candidate, is helping Maryland make the right ones as state leaders implement some of the country’s most ambitious climate initiatives.

Sreyas Chintapalli, photo courtesy of Will Kirk/homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

To achieve a net-zero carbon economy by 2045, the state has mandated that by 2028, at least 14.5% of electricity sold in Maryland must be derived from solar resources. Chintapalli is lending his technical expertise to the state’s Solar Photovoltaic Systems Recovery, Reuse, and Recycling Working Group as they seek to understand the challenges related to the increased adoption of solar photovoltaics.

Using computer modeling and tools from the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado, he is answering a host of questions, including what waste solar panels might generate as they near the end of life.

“Even if solar is more efficient from a greenhouse gas perspective, you still have tons of glass and aluminum and silicon that are going to have to be recycled, and there are very few commercial programs that recover trace metals,” Chintapalli says. The issue is just one of many complexities that Chintapalli, together with researchers from the University of Maryland, is advising on.

After completing an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis in 2016, Chintapalli worked at semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries for two years before joining the lab of Susanna Thon, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, Marshal Salant Faculty Scholar and the associate director for the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI).

For his thesis, “Structural Control of Absorption in Photonic Systems,” Chintapalli is researching efficiency improvements of quantum dot-based solar cells—tiny spheres of semiconductor material measuring 2–10 billionths of a meter in diameter. Quantum dots have the capacity to increase solar panels’ efficiency because they can extract more energy out of every incoming sunlight photon. They have enjoyed renewed momentum since the scientists who discovered them were honored with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2023.

Chintapalli is keen on borrowing the best from both industry and academia by exploring practical applications to research and modeling. “It’s ideally where I would like to end up, as someone who understands both the theory and applications of science,” he says.

This story was written by Poornima Apte, and was originally featured in the WSE Magazine.