Luque graduated in Telecommunications Engineering at the Technical University of Madrid in 1964, and obtained a Diplôme d'Études Approfondies in Solid State Physics at the University of Toulouse. In 1967 he completed his Ph.D. at UPM. A result of his Ph.D. work was the first laser constructed in Spain in 1966, today kept at UPM's "Joaquin Serna" Museum for the History of Telecommunications. He became Professor of Physical Electronics at the School of Telecommunication Engineering at UPM in 1970, and in 1979 founded the Institute of Solar Energy at the same university. His scientific work has been particularly directed towards reducing the cost of solar energy. He is the inventor of the bifacial solar cell and the intermediate band solar cell. He has worked extensively on solar concentration - optical methods for focussing the sun's rays more intensely on to the cells - and in 1988 presented the first monograph in English on this topic; he also chairs the international scientific committee at the Institute for Concentration Photovoltaic Systems, which opened in July 2006 in Puertollano. He has been awarded the title of doctor honoris causa by the University of Jaén and by the Charles III University of Madrid, both in 2005, and by the University of Málaga in 2014. He is honorary member of the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in Saint Petersburg. He is a member of the Engineering Academies of Russia and Belarus. He has been a member of the advisory committee of the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin since 2004, a member of the advisory council of the French National Institute for Solar Energy since 2005, and a member of the scientific advisory council of CASP – part of the United States Department of Energy - since 2009. In 2011 he was admitted to membership of the Russian Academy of Science. Between 2003-08 he coordinated the "Fullspectrum" project for developing methods to make more efficient use of the full solar spectrum. Since 2013 he has coordinated the research and development programme into intermediate band cells at the Ioffe Institute. He is also coordinating the NGCPV programme, a joint EU-Japan initiative on solar energy.
Publications
Luque has published 163 articles in international scientific journals, and 269 at international conferences; two books in Spanish and five in English, including the “Handbook of Photovoltaic Science and Engineering"; and 21 contributions to books in English. He has taken out 22 patents. He is on the editorial panel of four international scientific journals. His most frequently cited publication has been cited over 800 times.
Business links
In 1981 Luque started the Isofotón company, manufacturing photovoltaic units in Málaga, and was its chairman until 1989. In 2006 he founded Centesil, a public-private partnership, to develop manufacturing techniques for solar-grade silicon. He has worked on solar concentrators with BP Solar.
Awards
:es:Premio Nacional de Investigación Leonardo Torres Quevedo|Leonardo Torres Quevedo National Research Prize
