Electrochemical CO2 conversion can be coupled with a photovoltaic cell and provide a pathway to utilize solar energy for the chemical synthesis.
Ideally, such artificial photosynthesis system want to use CO2 and H2O as feed-stock molecules to produce value-added chemicals such as fuels or raw chemicals. The experimental results and theoretical simulation with various different types of metal catalysts Ag, Zn, and Cu give insights how to suppress the hydrogen evolution reaction HER is crucial to achieve efficient CO2 reduction catalysts.
In-situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy XAS studies are performed to understand the catalyst activity. Our series of studies suggests the modification of the metal nanoparticle surface by oxygen atom or surface mediated molecules can be effective strategies to increase CO2 reduction reaction activity and stability. Victor I. Department of Energy.
He received his M. His research interests include optical spectroscopy of semiconductor and metal nanostructures, carrier relaxation processes, strongly confined multiexcitons, energy and charge transfer, and fundamental aspects of photovoltaics. Chemically synthesized quantum dots QDs can potentially enable new classes of highly flexible, spectrally tunable lasers processible from solutions [1,2]. Despite a considerable progress over the past years, colloidal-QD lasing, however, is still at the laboratory stage and an important challenge - realization of lasing with electrical injection - is still unresolved.
A major complication, which hinders the progress in this field, is fast nonradiative Auger recombination of gain-active multicarrier species such as trions charged excitons and biexcitons [3,4]. Using these specially engineered QDs, we have been able to realize optical gain with direct-current electrical pumping [6], which has been a long-standing goal in the field of colloidal nanostructures. Such charged QDs are optical-gain-ready without excitation and, in principle, can exhibit lasing at vanishingly small pump levels.
