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UC Merced student and DLM correspondent goes on a tour of Dr. Erik Menke's Solar Research Lab at UC Merced.
Professor Menke's research addresses two broad questions:
• How does one prepare solar cells that are both cheap and efficient?
• How does one use these solar cells to create chemical fuels?
To address these questions, he uses electrodeposition to prepare a variety of nanostructures to understand how the various properties, such as material, size, shape, and crystallinity, affect either their photovoltaic or catalytic properties.