Nam-Gyu Park (Korean: 박남규; born 3 September 1960) is a South Korean chemical engineer. He is Distinguished Professor and Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)-Fellow at School of Chemical Engineering, SKKU. His research focuses on high efficiency mesoscopic nanostructured solar cells. He announced the beginning of perovskite photovoltaic research by first reporting long-term stable perovskite solar cells in 2012, and is called the pioneer of practical perovskite solar cells.
Career He is from Masan, South Gyeongsang Province (now Changwon). When he was young, his father was transferred to the Busan branch of Korea Electric Power Corporation, so he moved to Busan and received his elementary, middle, and high school education there. As a teenager, he wanted to be an artist or architect, but he couldn't due to opposition from his music teacher. Upon entering the Department of Chemistry Education at Seoul National University in 1981, he joined the 9th Infantry Division (also known as the White Horse Division) and served for two years and seven months. He returned to Seoul National University after being discharged from the military in 1984, majored in inorganic chemistry, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1988. Since January 1988, he worked as a researcher at SKC (formerly known as Sunkyung Chemical)'s Cheonan plant, which was then well-known as a videotape, compact disc and floppy disk manufacturer, but he resigned in February 1990. He then attended the Department of Chemistry at Seoul National University and became a student of Professor Choy Jin-ho. At first, he wanted to study superconductors, but changed his direction to perovskite research at the suggestion of the professor. In February 1992, he earned his master's degree in inorganic chemistry from Seoul National University graduate school, and in February 1995, he earned his doctorate in inorganic chemistry through a paper titled "Synthesis and physico-chemical properties of 2-dimensional inorganic solids and their intercalation compounds". From March 1996 to May 1997, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut de Chimie de la Matiere Condensee de Bordeaux – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (ICMCB-CNRS) in Pessac, France, and conducted research to improve efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells. From June 1997 to December 1999, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, the United States. After returning to South Korea in January 2000, he worked as a senior researcher at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), and moved to the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in December 2005 as the head of the solar cell research center and the head of the energy materials research center. However, dye-sensitized solar cells have some disadvantages in that they are economical but have limited energy conversion efficiency. Meanwhile, at a solar cell-related conference held in Switzerland in 2007, Tsutomu Miyasaka, a professor at Toin University of Yokohama, Japan, presented a presentation on perovskite solar cells. In a paper published in 2009, Tsutomu Miyasaka first presented a dye-sensitized solar cell model with perovskite structural materials, but it was implemented in a liquid state, making it less stable and only 3.8% efficient, so it received little attention. When he was appointed as a professor at Sungkyunkwan University in July 2009, he conducted research on perovskites, and paid attention to the fact that the perovskite structural compounds have superconductivity along with properties of nonconductors, semiconductors, and conductors and thus have properties that absorb light well. In August 2012, he developed the world's first solar cell made of solid perovskite with Professor Michael Grätzel at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. The solid perovskite solar cell he developed recorded the highest efficiency at the time of 9.7%, and the efficiency remained constant even when exposed to the outside for more than 500 hours. Published in the journal Scientific Reports, a sister paper of Nature, it was considered the first paper on a stable and efficient solid perovskite solar cell. Since then, it has been evaluated as providing an opportunity to conduct research on perovskite solar cells around the world. His perovskite solar cell research achievements gained international recognition by winning the British Rank Prizes for Optoelectronics in 2022, the Italian ENI award for Energy Frontiers in 2024, and the German Humboldt Research Award in 2025. In 2023, he was the only South Korean scientists and technicians to be invited to the Nobel Symposium hosted by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to present solid perovskite solar cells.
Selected awards and honors Aug. 2008: KIST Award of Month, KIST Oct. 2008: Scientist of the Month, Ministry of Science and ICT and National Research Foundation of Korea Oct. 2008: Kyunhang Electricity and Energy Award, Korean Government 2009: Best KIST Award, KIST 2010: DuPont Science and Technology Award, DuPont Korea 2013: 100 National Outstanding Awards, Korean Government 2014: MRS Outstanding Research Award, MRS 2014: WCPEC-6 Paper Award, Kyoto, Japan 2015: Hamakawa Award of PVSEC, Busan, Korea 2016: Dukmyung KAST Engineering Award, KAST 2017: Clarivate Citation Laureates, Clarivate Analytics 2018: ACS-KCS Excellence Award, American Chemical Society 2018: Lee Hsun Lecture Award, Chinese Academy of Sciences 2018: Ho-Am Prize in Engineering, Ho-Am Foundation 2018: Prime Minister Award, No. 6912 2018: Minister of Science Award, No. 25595 2018: Scientist of the Year Award 2019: Asian Scientist 100, Asian Scientist 2020: 1st Jin-Ho Choy Academic Award, Korean Chemical Society 2021: NANO 2022: Rank Prizes for Optoelectronics 2023: Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Materials Science - 2023 2024: Top Scientist and Technologist Award of Korea 2024: ENI award for Energy Frontiers 2024: NAEK Award, National Academy of Engineering of Korea 2025: Humboldt Research Award
Patents Perovskite Solar Cell
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