Organic-semiconductor-based photocathodes for selective CO2 photoreduction into solar fuels

To mitigate the climate change and energy crisis, this proposal aiming at the strategy of carbon dioxide (CO2) photoreduction into sustainable solar fuels, is going to solve the problems of low activity and poor selectivity in CO2 reduction reactions.

The overall purpose of this project is to develop organic-semiconductor (OS)-based photocathodes with controlled surface and interface energetics at a molecular level to achieve selective photoreduction of CO2 into solar fuels. This project can be best realized in the groups of Prof. Iain McCulloch at the University of Oxford and Prof.

Mats Fahlman at Linköping University (LiU).

I will be the lead person to combine the McCulloch lab´s expertisedesign and synthesis of OSs for photocatalysis and the Fahlman lab´s expertise in surface/interface science , based on my developed expertise of surface physics and chemistry, and polymer science.

Surface and interface energetics determination will be carried out at LiU (6 + 6 months) based on the preliminary results.

The core parts of the project, photocathode optimization, photocatalytic performance evaluation, and photocatalytic mechanism investigation will be conducted at Oxford (12 + 12 months).I believe this project would contribute to several OS-based photocatalysts for selective CO2 photoreduction into solar fuels with new fundamental insights in photocathode design, which is the starting point for my development in the new research area of ​​photoelectrocatalysis and solar fuels .