Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2022
Volume 67, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 9–12, 2022; New York
Session Q06: Artificial PhotosynthesisInvited Live Streamed Undergrad Friendly
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Sponsoring Units: FPS Chair: Henry Kelly Room: Marquis A-B |
Monday, April 11, 2022 10:45AM - 11:21AM |
Q06.00001: Making Fuels with Sunlight and Hybrid Photoelectrodes Invited Speaker: Jillian Dempsey Hybrid photoelectrodes—accessed through integration of molecular fuel-producing catalysts with visible light-absorbing semiconductor materials—promise high selectivity, durability, and activity for the sunlight-driven generation of liquid fuels. Anchoring strategies to immobilize catalysts on photon-capturing materials can enable efficient coupling of light harvesting and fuel production. Immobilization also creates a unique microenvironment for the molecular catalyst that can influence selectivity, efficiency, and durability. Electrochemical, spectroscopy, and microscopy data together provide insight to how catalyst microenvironment affects the catalyst. |
Monday, April 11, 2022 11:21AM - 11:57AM |
Q06.00002: Conversion of Solar Energy into Chemical Energy by Artificial Photosynthesis Invited Speaker: Frances A Houle Artificial photosynthesis, where human-made devices convert sunlight and components of air into useful chemicals, holds the promise of being an unlimited source of chemical energy for fuels and feedstocks. It is also a way to store energy from intermittent renewable sources as a complement to batteries. Although the sunlight-to-chemical-energy transformation is at its heart a chemical process, it is deeply intertwined with physics including solid state physics, optical and thermal physics, materials physics, fluidics, and polymer physics among other subdisciplines. In this talk, I will describe how artificial photosynthesis works and discuss how contributions from physics research have played a significant role to make progress toward a viable technology. Current challenges and opportunities for new research directions will be discussed. |
Monday, April 11, 2022 11:57AM - 12:33PM |
Q06.00003: Learning from Nature How to Make Solar Fuels Invited Speaker: Gary Brudvig Photosystem II (PSII) uses light energy to split water into protons, electrons and oxygen. In this reaction, Nature has solved the difficult chemical problem of efficient four-electron oxidation of water to yield O2 without significant side reactions. In order to use Nature’s solution for the design of materials that split water for solar fuel production, it is important to understand the mechanism of the reaction. The X-ray crystal and cryo-electron microscopy structures of cyanobacterial PSII provide information on the structure of the Mn and Ca ions, the redox-active tyrosine called tyrosine-Z, chloride and the surrounding amino acids that comprise the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC). The structure of the OEC in the intermediate oxidation states of the catalytic cycle, the binding of substrate water molecules to the OEC and the water oxidation chemistry of PSII will be discussed in the light of biophysical, spectroscopic and computational studies, inorganic chemistry and X-ray crystallographic information. These insights on the natural photosynthetic system are being applied to develop bioinspired materials for photochemical water oxidation and solar fuel production. Our progress on the development of synthetic water oxidation catalysts and their use in materials for artificial photosynthesis will be discussed. |
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