This symposium will focus on recent advancements in photoelectrochemical approaches for the sustainable production of added-value chemicals and industrial waste valorisation, as promising strategies for clean chemical and fuel production, compatible with circular economy schemes. Discussions will cover the design and development of novel materials, photoelectrodes and advanced devices for different reactions including water splitting, CO2 reduction, ammonia synthesis, waste valorization and environmental remediation. Upscaling strategies and technological developments beyond lab-scale are particularly relevant to the scope.
This symposium will foster a multi-disciplinary and collaborative environment, bridging lab-scale developments to industrial relevant processes and encouraging the circulation of novel ideas and recent milestones in the field of photoelectrochemical processes.
To this end, PECVAL will offer an interdisciplinary forum where both renowned scientists and young researchers will present their most relevant results, illustrating the state of the art and the latest advances in the development of more efficient materials and devices for the production of energy in the fields of (photo)electrochemistry Young researchers' active participation will be encouraged through dedicated oral and poster contributions spots.
- Direct solar water splitting (hydrogen evolution, oxygen evolution,…)
- Direct solar-driven valorization reactions of CO2, biomass, organics, nitrogen compounds and/or plastics
- Novel semiconductor and co-catalyst materials for PEC and PC (e.g., ternary oxides, perovskites, 2D materials, organics, MOFs, COFs, and SACs)
- Novel architectures and approaches for PEC and PC (e.g., heterojunction, Z- scheme, PV-integrated, tandem, and decoupled cells or systems)
- Advanced characterization techniques (e.g., in-operando) of PEC and PC systems covering e.g., performance, stability, charge transfer dynamics, and syntheses.
- Multi-physics modelling of systems
- Upscaling
- Recycling, recovery and waste use processes
Dr Eslava leads a cutting-edge research group focused on the development of novel synthesis approaches for (photo)electrochemical and (photo)catalytic materials. His team's work involves exploring a wide range of materials, including transition metal oxides, halide perovskites, organic bulk heterojunctions, oxide perovskites, and graphene derivatives. By conducting comprehensive physicochemical and electrochemical characterizations, they aim to link material properties to practical applications, particularly in the field of energy conversion. Their research has significant interdisciplinary reach, spanning chemical engineering, chemistry, physics, and materials science. Dr Eslava's research contributions have been widely recognized, with over 85 publications in leading journals like Nature Energy, Advanced Materials, Energy & Environmental Science, and Nature Communications. He has been awarded prestigious funding from organizations such as The Royal Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, EPSRC, and Innovate UK. His innovative contributions to the field earned him the Warner Medal from the Institution of Chemical Engineers for his impactful research and dissemination efforts.
Sixto Giménez (M. Sc. Physics 1996, Ph. D. Physics 2002) is Associate Professor at Universitat Jaume I de Castelló (Spain). His professional career has been focused on the study of micro and nanostructured materials for different applications spanning from structural components to optoelectronic devices. During his PhD thesis at the University of Navarra, he studied the relationship between processing of metallic and ceramic powders, their sintering behavior and mechanical properties. He took a Post-Doc position at the Katholiek Universiteit Leuven where he focused on the development of non-destructive and in-situ characterization techniques of the sintering behavior of metallic porous materials. In January 2008, he joined the Group of Photovoltaic and Optoelectronic Devices of University Jaume I where he is involved in the development of new concepts for photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical devices based on nanoscaled materials, particularly studying the optoelectronic and electrochemical responses of the devices by electrical impedance spectroscopy. He has co-authored more than 80 scientific papers in international journals and has received more than 5000 citations. His current h-index is 31.
Virgil Andrei is a Nanyang Assistant Professor (NAP) in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at NTU Singapore. His research revolves around the integration of renewable energy technologies (photoelectrocatalysis, photovoltaics, thermoelectrics) for effective solar-to-chemical synthesis. His work places a strong focus on rational material, catalyst and device design, introducing modern fabrication techniques towards low-cost, large-scale solar fuel applications.
Virgil was born in Bucharest, Romania. He obtained his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in chemistry from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he studied thermoelectric polymer pastes and films in the group of Prof. Klaus Rademann (2014–2016). He then pursued a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Cambridge (2016–2020), where he developed perovskite-based artificial leaves in the group of Prof. Erwin Reisner, working closely with the optoelectronics group of Prof. Richard Friend at the Cavendish Laboratory. During his Title A Research Fellowship at St. John’s College, Cambridge (2020-2025), he introduced unconventional concepts including floating thin-film devices for water splitting and carbon dioxide reduction, pixelated devices for long term hydrogen production, or integrated thermoelectric modules for solar waste heat harvesting. As a visiting Winton Fellow in the group of Prof. Peidong Yang at the University of California, Berkeley (2022), he expanded the reaction scope of these systems further to value-added hydrocarbons and organic oxidation products.
Marco Favaro is the deputy head of the Institute for Solar Fuels at the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB), Germany. After his PhD at the University of Padua (Italy) and Technical University of Munich (Germany), concluded in 2014, he spent two years as a Post-doctoral fellow at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis in Berkeley, USA, in the group of Dr. Junko Yano. He moved to Germany in 2017 to join the HZB. Here, his research activity focuses on understanding chemical composition/electronic-structural properties/performance interplay in photoelectrocatalysts by coupling operando multimodal spectroelectrochemical investigations with synchrotron-based in situ/operando spectroscopies.
I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London (ICL). My principal interests and expertise are in the science and engineering of electrochemical energy conversion, CO2 reduction, and separation processes for industrial effluent treatment and material recycling. After obtaining my MSci degree in Physics at ICL in 2007, I moved to the Department of Chemical Engineering to carry out PhD studies in electrochemical wastewater treatment through heavy metal recovery. I subsequently conducted multiple postdoctoral research projects in the same department, including in photoelectrochemical solar fuel production, waste management by electrochemical treatment of waste streams and valorisation of CO2 via conversion into fuels. Academic research projects in my group are aimed at solving industrial problems through both experimental and numerical modelling investigations.
Chiara Maccato obtained her MSc degree in Chemistry with full marks in 1995; PhD in Chemical Sciences in 1999. After a Post-Doc grant, in 2000 she became Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemical Sciences of Padova University, where she is currently Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry. Her main scientific interests are focused on inorganic/hybrid nanoarchitectures for sustainable energy production, environmental remediation, and gas sensing. and accordingly, she has been responsible of several research projects/industrial contracts. Since 2005 she is the coordinator of a morphological characterization laboratory and responsible of a research group on multi-functional inorganic and hybrid nanomaterials. She is referee for many international journals/projects and has authored more than 240 papers on international journals.
Dr. Roland Marschall obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Leibniz University Hannover in 2008, working on mesoporous materials for fuel cell applications. After a one year postdoctoral research at the University of Queensland in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials, he joined in 2010 the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC as project leader. In 2011, he joined the Industrial Chemistry Laboratory at Ruhr-University Bochum as young researcher. From 07/2013 to 08/2018, he was Emmy-Noether Young Investigator at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen. Since 08/2018, he is Full Professor at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. His current research interests are heterogeneous photocatalysis, especially photocatalytic water splitting and nitrogen reduction using semiconductor mixed oxides, and synthesis of oxidic mesostructured materials for energy applications.
Sudhanshu Shukla is a senior researcher at Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), Belgium and formerly a Marie Skłodowska–Curie fellow at IMEC. He obtained his PhD from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2017 in the group of Prof. Qihua Xiong. He was a visiting research scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of California, Berkeley, USA (2016) in the group of Prof. Joel Ager. After his PhD, he joined Prof. Susanne Siebentritt's group at Univeristy of Luxembourg before joining IMEC. His research interest includes fundamental understanding and application of novel compound semiconductors for photovoltaics and photoelectrochemical solar fuels generation.