Proceedings of nanoGe September Meeting 2017 (NFM17)
Publication date: 20th June 2016
Molecular catalysts for solar fuels processes can be tuned to a large extent via chemical design. This means a greater challenge but also a greater potential, if the design principles are understood and implemented. Important examples of molecular catalysts are enzymes, which often achieve high rates and turnover numbers by a carefully designed higher coordination sphere around their active sites. This induces stability, product specificity and typically low catalytic overpotential. It also manages the release and/or uptake of protons that controls the rate of the redox processes by proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET). However, for solar fuels applications in man-made systems, enzymes are often costly to prepare, they have large footprints and are often unstable outside the living organism. It is therefore both of fundamental and practical interest to investigate to what extent synthetic, small molecule catalysts can be tuned and improved, based on the inspiration from enzymes.
Rational design of catalysts and comparative studies rely on detailed information about the mechanism of catalysis that in most cases is not readily available. Unbiased information on the catalyst performance is needed, beyond simple benchmarking that is subject to the conditions chosen. Detailed mechanistic studies electrochemical and spectroscopic methods can provide a good understanding of the catalyst function under different conditions.
In my lecture I will describe these issues and give examples from the literature and our own work in the Swedish Consortium for Artificial Photosynthesis. This includes the design of the catalysts’ 2nd coordination sphere, and their immobilization in molecular matrices and on surfaces. We have made extensive studies of how to control and understand PCET reactions, which we believe can guide the design of greatly improved molecular solar fuels catalysts. I will also give examples of our use of transient UV/VIS and mid-IR spectroscopy to resolve highly reactive intermediates of molecular catalysts and enzymes, and elucidate their structures, both in solution and immobilized on photoactive electrodes.
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) is celebrated yearly in May. The main topics are the development, function and modeling of materials and devices for hybrid and organic solar cells. The field is now dominated by perovskite solar cells but also other hybrid technologies, as organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration into devices for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production.
Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.