The University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (UNITOV) is based on a campus of 600 hectares with 43000 students and 19 Departments. In 2006, the University has established together with the Lazio Region the Centre for Hybrid and Organic Solar Energy (CHOSE) to create an excellence hub in the field of next-generation photovoltaics (PV). CHOSE is distributed across several laboratories within the University Campus of Tor Vergata with a total extension of above 600 square meters. The fabrication laboratory houses equipment for the manufacturing and characterization of organic, hybrid, dye sensitized and perovskite solar cells, large area modules and panels on glass and flexible substrates. In addition to that, production and characterization systems for flexible storage devices, supercapacitors and batteries are available. Other laboratories include material characterization equipment and outdoor testing facilities.

More than 40 researchers, including graduate students, postdocs and staff, work at CHOSE to optimize and up-scale the fabrication of next-generation PV (organic and hybrid organic / inorganic solar cells and modules) and energy storage devices, to bridge the gap between academia and industry, to foster the technology transfer to SMEs and the development of innovative applications of such promising technologies, in collaborations with companies at both domestic and international level.

Through such technology transfer actions, CHOSE has spun-off several companies, such as Intellienergia srl, TiberLab srl, Ingem srl and Cicci research srl, which are active and work on the design and realization of PV systems and in related technologies, employing more than 20 people, mostly under 40s.

At international level, CHOSE is part of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA), the largest European platform for the development of research and technologies in the energy field and is a member of the Graphene Flagship, the most important European research action on graphene and related materials.