How Thuc-Quyen Nguyen’s dreams of capturing the sun led her to organic electronics

Thuc-Quyen Nguyen’s interest in harvesting energy from the sun dates back to her childhood in Vietnam. At age five, her mother and siblings moved to a remote village with no electricity or clean water. ‘When the sun went down at 5.30-6pm, my mother made us go to bed’ as there was no money for oil for a lamp, she says. ‘I remember laying there for hours dreaming about capturing [the sunlight] and putting it in a little jar, so that at night I could use it to study or read my book.’