Winner: 2025 Environment, Sustainability and Energy mid-career Prize
Dr Jon Major
University of Liverpool
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2025 Environment, Sustainability and Energy mid-career Prize: awarded for pioneering work into the development, characterisation, and optimisation of inorganic thin-film solar cells and developing antimony selenide photovoltaic materials.
Jon develops new types of solar cell materials that are cheaper, more sustainable and easier to manufacture than existing technologies. Traditional solar panels rely on silicon wafers that require complex, high temperature processes to manufacture. Jon鈥檚 research focuses on materials which absorb light much more effectively, meaning lower purity, thinner layers can be deposited directly on to glass or flexible surfaces at lower cost.
His group studies small scale test devices made in their laboratory. They fabricate hundreds of solar cells and track performance changes then reverse engineer them to understand the chemical and materials changes that have occurred. The group is interested in how tiny imperfections in these materials affect how well they convert sunlight into electricity.
By understanding and controlling these factors, they aim to make solar cells that are more efficient, more reliable and better suited for large-scale deployment. Their goal is to help make solar power more accessible around the world, and their work contributes to global efforts in tackling climate change and building a sustainable energy future.
Biography
Dr Jon Major is a Reader in the Department of Physics and the Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy at the University of Liverpool. He leads a research group focused on developing next-generation thin-film photovoltaic technologies, with an emphasis on scalable processing, grain boundary engineering, and inorganic absorber materials such as cadmium telluride (CdTe) and antimony chalcogenides.
Originally from Cumbria, Jon studied Physics at Newcastle University before completing a PhD at Durham, where he investigated the growth and performance of CdTe solar cells. Following postdoctoral work and an experimental officer post at Durham, he joined Liverpool in 2011, where he later secured an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship.
Jon has been involved in a range of European and UK networks on solar energy materials. He is the photovoltaics and photocatalysis editor for Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing and a regular contributor to public science writing. His group works at the intersection of materials chemistry and device physics, using a variety of fabrication methods and advanced characterisation techniques to understand and overcome performance limits in polycrystalline semiconductors.
The way to have your work be truly impactful is to write in an engaging manner. A good paper should grab the readers鈥� attention like a good book.
Dr John Major
Q&A with Dr Jon Major
What advice would you give to a young person considering a career in chemistry?
Practise your writing. Students in the sciences have a tendency to neglect writing skills but the way to have your work be truly impactful is to write in an engaging manner. A good paper should grab the readers鈥� attention like a good book.
Can you tell us about a scientific development on the horizon that you are excited about?
I'm very interested in the prospects for indoor solar cells, which I'll admit sounds nonsensical at first. These are solar cells which are redesigned to function using energy recovered from artificial lights, improving the efficiency of electricity usage. This also means we can use these to power sensors which support smart buildings, making energy use yet more efficient. There are a number of technical challenges to overcome with this, but I find it an exciting way to think about how to adapt an existing technology to this new application.
What has been a challenge for you (either personally or in your career)?
The pandemic was incredibly difficult. My wife works for the NHS so it meant I was stuck at home with a one-year-old and a five-year-old, trying to care for them and keep a research career going. It suddenly all felt very difficult.
What does good research culture look like/mean to you?
It is all about backing your team and supporting them, rather than ordering people around. I consider my role to be a mentor to members of my research group, if my PhD students fail, I've failed with them. Your research team should always feel that you are behind them, you will help them however you can, and it's done together. It doesn't feel that long ago, even though it factually is, that I was in their position, so I take joy and pride in their successes. That's the key to a good culture and a satisfying career.
Why do you think collaboration and teamwork are important in science?
It's always important in science to recognise what you don't know. I'm aware of my specific range of expertise but also a vast array of scientific blind spots, so having collaborators both at Liverpool and around the world is vital. Knowing the right person to ask for input on a particular problem is a constant source of support, and having amazing postdocs and PhD students who are all-knowledgeable on their particular project is the cornerstone of everything we do.
What is your favourite element?
I'm going to go for magnesium. A number of years back, I published a paper in Nature where we developed a process based on magnesium chloride to replace cadmium chloride. The point being that while cadmium chloride is toxic, magnesium chloride is completely safe and among other things, as I put in the paper, used to make tofu. This tofu point turned out to be of massive interest to the media in a way nothing else I've done ever was and led to me being asked about tofu (not much about solar cells) on everything from BBC News to German radio. I genuinely don't think I'd have had the same career if I hadn't decided to replace cadmium with magnesium, or perhaps more accurately if I hadn't realised what was in tofu.