Former Staff - Kathrine Gerth

Departed on: August 22, 2008
Can be contacted at: University of Colorado, Boulder
email: Kathrine.Gerth@Colorado.edu

Kate Gerth received a B.A. in Chemistry from Northwestern University in 2004. Her major undergraduate research involved using nonlinear spectroscopy to study environmentally relevant surface interactions under the direction of Franz Geiger. Other research projects performed during her undergraduate years include synthesizing novel organic-inorganic polymers at the University of South Carolina, analyzing hydrothermal formations at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and doing some physical oceanography through a program at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She began her graduate studies in Physical Chemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the fall of 2004 and performed various lab rotations there before joining Arthur Nozik’s group in the summer of 2005.

While at NREL, she worked on fabricating and characterizing third-generation photovoltaic devices incorporating both polymers and quantum dots. Higher efficiencies can be realized using materials that exhibit multiple exciton generation—a carrier multiplication process by which one high-energy photon can create as many as three electrons. Other projects included four-wave mixing experiments with which to study the process of multiple-exciton generation.

Selected Publications

Mifflin A.L., Gerth K.A., Weiss B.M., Geiger F.M., "Surface studies of chromate binding to fused quartz/water interfaces,” Journal of Physical Chemistry A 107 (32), 6212–6217 (2003).
Mifflin A.L., Gerth K.A., Geiger F.M., “Kinetics of chromate adsorption and desorption at fused quartz/water interfaces studied by second harmonic generation,” Journal of Physical Chemistry A 107 (45), 9620–9627 (2003).

NREL Publications

View NREL publications for this staff member.