Speaker: Dr. TRAN DINH PHONG (Department of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH), Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology)

Title: TOWARD THE CONSTRUCTION OF A VIABLE ARTIFICIAL LEAF FOR SOLAR H₂ GENERATION

Abstract: Solar water splitting represents an attractive technology to harvest and store the abundant but intermittent solar energy in the form of chemical energy within the H₂ molecules. It can be realized by using an appropriate photoelectrochemical device, called artificial leaf. In the last two decades, several important advances have been achieved in the identification of suitable catalysts, light harvesting materials as well as artificial leaf engineering. Even though, enormous challenges remain that should be addressed in coming years to make this technology applicable for a viable large-scale production of H₂. In this seminar, we first describe the current state-of-the-art of the solar water splitting research. We then discuss on our current progress in development of noble-metal free catalysts [1-4], nanostructured light harvesters [5] as well as the catalyst/ light harvester assemblage for artificial leaf construction [6,7].

Refs:

1. Phong D. Tran et al, Nature Materials, 2016, 15, 640-646

2. Quyen T. Nguyen et al, ACS Applied Materials Interfaces, 2018, 10, 8659-8665

3. Tien D. Tran et al,  Chemical Communications, 2018, 54, 3363-3366

4. Linh N. Nguyen et al, Chemistry - An Asian Journal, 2018, 13, 1530-1534

5. Hoang V. Le et al, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 2018, 43, 21209-21218

6. Yang Chen et al, ACS Nano, 2015, 9, 3829-3836

7. Duc N. Nguyen, manuscript under preparation

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