Many promising semiconductors and device architectures have been explored towards photoelectrochemical transformations and waste valorization. Despite rapid developments in the material systems, architecture schemes, and demonstration of versatile reactions, the prevailing hurdles related to instability, scalability and uncertain cost estimations inhibit their practical deployment. The symposium invites contribution involving novel concepts for solar to fuels technology. This includes photocatalytic, photoelectrochemical and PV-driven electrolysis or combined topics and its technoeconomic assessments.
The symposium focuses on addressing limiting factors from material-to-device-to-system level components.
In addition, advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) assisted materials discovery approaches to address current materials limitations, and rapid diagnostics are also welcome.
- • Testing of solar fuels/artificial photosynthesis devices and benchmarking.
- • Photocatalysis, photoelectrochemistry and PV-electrolysis
- • Solar fuels devices stability and failure analysis.
- • Theory-augmented AI approaches for new photoelectrode and catalyst discovery.
- • Life-cycle, technoeconomics and industrial adaptation
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.
Fatwa Abdi is an Associate Professor at the School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong. Until July 2023, he was a group leader and the deputy head of the Institute for Solar Fuels, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB). He obtained his PhD (cum laude) in Chemical Engineering from TU Delft, the Netherlands, in 2013. He was the recipient of the Martinus van Marum prize from the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences and Humanities. His research focusses on the development of novel (photo)electrode materials as well as engineering and scale-up of devices for solar fuels and chemicals conversion.
Sophia Haussener is a Professor heading the Laboratory of Renewable Energy Science and Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL). Her current research is focused on providing design guidelines for thermal, thermochemical, and photoelectrochemical energy conversion reactors through multi-physics modelling and experimentation. Her research interests include: thermal sciences, fluid dynamics, charge transfer, electro-magnetism, and thermo/electro/photochemistry in complex multi-phase media on multiple scales. She received her MSc (2007) and PhD (2010) in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) between 2011 and 2012. She has published over 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and 2 books. She has been awarded the ETH medal (2011), the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation award (2011), the ABB Forschungspreis (2012), the Prix Zonta (2015), the Global Change Award (2017), and the Raymond Viskanta Award (2019), and is a recipient of a Starting Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation (2014).
Professor Erwin Reisner received his education and professional training at the University of Vienna (PhD in 2005), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (postdoc from 2005-2007) and the University of Oxford (postdoc from 2008-2009). He joined the University of Cambridge as a University Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry in 2010, became a Fellow of St. John’s College in 2011, was appointed to Reader in 2015 and to his current position of Professor of Energy and Sustainability in 2017. He started his independent research programme on artificial photosynthesis (solar fuels) with the support of an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship (2009-2015), which also received substantial early support by the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Sustainable SynGas Chemistry (2012-2019). In 2016, he received a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant to develop the field of semi-artificial photosynthesis (biohybrid systems for solar fuel synthesis) and has recently been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant (now funded by the UKRI underwrite scheme) on semi-biological domino catalysis for solar chemical production. He is the academic lead (PI) of the Cambridge Circular Plastics Centre (CirPlas; since 2019), where his team develops solar-powered valorisation technologies for the conversion of solid waste streams (biomass and plastics) to fuels and chemicals. He has acted as the academic lead of the UK Solar Fuels Network, which coordinates the national activities in artificial photosynthesis (2017-2021) and is currently a co-director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Integrated Functional Nano (nanoCDT) in Cambridge as well as a member of the European research consortia ‘Sofia’ and ‘solar2chem'.