Oct 13, 3:45 PM: ZOOM MEETING - Closs Lecture/JFI Tuesday Seminar - Prof. ...
ABSTRACt: The recent rapid, global growth of solar energy has expanded the science frontier in this area towards highly efficient direct artificial photosynthesis of energy-dense chemicals, fuels and materials from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide, with interest focused on hydrogen and products from reduction of carbon dioxide. Solar fuels generators are photoactive electrochemical systems with the additional science challenges of achieving high energy conversion efficiency, catalytic selectivity, and long-term component durability. This has motivated an accelerated discovery initiative, combining theory and experiment, to seek and find new photocatalyst and electrocatalyst materials, as well as multi-physics modeling to design prototype solar fuels generators Recently design of photoelectrochemical systems with semiconductors coupled to water oxidation and reduction catalysts have enabled solar-to-hydrogen generation with >19% efficiency and solar-driven CO2 to CO with similar efficiency. Solar-driven reduction of carbon dioxide to valuable products such as liquid fuels presents a particular challenge for selectivity in catalysis and I will describe new mechanisms for catalytic selectivity that combine heterogeneous and molecular catalysts, as well as approaches to use the optically excited states generated by light itself to create new catalytic pathways for CO2 reduction. Host: Christopher Melnychuk at cmelnychuk@uchicago.edu. For any other assistance please contact Brenda Thomas at bthomas@uchicago.edu. ZOOM MEETING INFORMATION WILL BE SENT VIA EMAIL ANNOUNCEMENT.Date: October 13, 2020Time: 3:45 PM - 4:45 PM