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    • Thrust 4

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THRUST 3: Materials Integration and Components

development and understanding of integrated catalyst/light absorber assemblies

Researchers in Thrust 3 are synthesizing and characterizing photocatalytic assemblies to elucidate factors governing efficiency, selectivity, and stability, with the aim of providing high performance interfaces for photocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction. They are establishing a pipeline from new materials discovery to integrated (photo) electrochemical assemblies. 

The approach involves the following themes:

• Understanding of materials interactions and processing sensitivities on performance.

• Study of the fundamental physics of charge transport from semiconductors to catalysts in semiconductor/catalyst/electrolyte assemblies.

• Establishing approaches for interface engineering that enable desired photovoltages, high charge extraction efficiencies, and durability under operational conditions.

• Elucidating the role of spatially inhomogeneous and temporally varying potentials on photocatalytic activity, selectivity, and stability.

• Integration of electrocatalysts into non-planar 3-D morphologies, allowing the interplay between optical absorption, photonic and plasmonic effects.

• Integration of new materials into functional photoelectrodes with high reproducibility at scales that reduce edge effects and enable failure mechanisms to be captured by experiment.

Thrust 3 Coordinator is Dr. Francesca Toma

Selected Recent Publications

Shinde, A. et al. Discovery of Fe–Ce Oxide/BiVO4 Photoanodes through Combinatorial Exploration of Ni–Fe–Co–Ce Oxide Coatings. ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.6b06714 (2016).

Yang, J. et al. A multifunctional biphasic water splitting catalyst tailored for integration with high-performance semiconductor photoanodes. Nature Materials, DOI: 10.1038/nmat4794 (2016).

Toma, et al. Mechanistic insights into chemical and photochemical transformations of bismuth vanadate photoanodes. Nature Communications, 7, 12012, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12012 (2016).

Gaulding, E. A., Liu, G., Chen, C. T., Lobbert, L., Li, A., Segev, G., Eichhorn, J., Aloni, S., Schwartzberg, A., Sharp, I. D., and Toma, F. Fabrication and optical characterization of polystyrene opal templates for the synthesis of scalable, nanoporous (photo)electrocatalytic materials by electrodeposition. J. Mater. Chem. A, DOI:10.1039/C7TA00512A (2017).

Singh, A. K., Zhou, L., Shinde, A., Suram, S. K., Montoya, J. H., Winston, D., Gregoire, J. M., Persson, K. A. Electrochemical Stability of Metastable Materials. Chemistry of Materials, DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.7b03980 (2017).

Zheng, F., Pham, H. H., Wang, L.-W. The effects of c-Si/a-SiO2 interface atomic structure on its band alignment: an ab initio study. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, DOI: 10.1039/C7CP05879A (2017).

For complete list of JCAP work, please see publications and research highlight pages.