Event Date
Inorganic Materials for Photocatalytic and Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conversion
Abstract
Inorganic chemistry is central to the development of next generation solar energy conversion systems. This talk describes recent approaches in the Osterloh lab to construct photovoltaic devices and photocatalysts for solar hydrogen generation from water from inorganic semiconductors. The importance of aliovalent dopants to cure defects in the SrTiO3 water splitting photocatalyst will be illustrated 1 and the importance of crystal facets to promote charge separation. 2 In BaTiO3, a ferroelectric effect guides electrons and holes into separate directions and controls both hydrogen evolution and water oxidation under UV illumination. 3 For the Ni2P/n-GaP hydrogen evolution photocatalyst it is shown how charge separation is driven by interfacial junctions, and why n-type semiconductors are preferred over p-type semiconductors as H2 evolving photocatalysts. 4 Lastly, novel approaches to reduce recombination defects in transition metal oxynitride semiconductors, incl. LaTiO2N, for photoelectrochemical water splitting will be described.