christopher ikpefua
founder of quantaleaf. chris builds the company from a lab bench at Coppin State University in West Baltimore, where he designs, models, fabricates and images the Q-Reflect layer himself.
the whole stack, one person
optical simulation
wave-optics modeling in COMSOL, a custom transfer-matrix code, and device simulation in SCAPS-1D and Setfos.
fabrication and imaging
thin-film deposition and dewetting, imaged by FESEM and AFM, measured by UV-Vis-NIR and fluorescence spectroscopy.
intellectual property
two U.S. provisional patent applications, drafted and filed by the company.
commercialization
completed NSF I-Corps Prep. building the company around engineering projects and process licensing.
mentoring in the lab
chris has mentored about a dozen high-school researchers at Coppin State. recent student projects include a CsPbBr₃ perovskite film and a gold-nanoparticle dye-sensitized solar cell, and he has judged student research projects.
why baltimore
“West Baltimore has the talent for serious hardware work. i'd rather help prove it than wait for someone else to.”