Publication date: 26th March 2026
There is increasing interest in harnessing sunlight to drive the synthesis of molecular fuels and chemicals, including in particular water photolysis to yield molecular oxygen and hydrogen. This can be achieved either through the coupling of photovoltaic cells and electrolysis, or through direct sunlight conversion by photoelectrodes or photocatalysts, the latter being the focus of this talk. In solar conversion, there is often a critical kinetic mismatch between the lifetimes of initially generated photoexcited states and the timescales of charge extraction / catalysis. I will start my talk by introducing solar driven fuel synthesis, its motivation and examples of state of the art materials and devices. I will then go on to discuss the charge carrier lifetime challenge in photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic systems. I will contrast this with the smaller lifetime challenges for photovoltaic solar energy conversion. I will then go on to discuss some of our recent studies employing transient optical spectroscopies measuring charge carrier dynamics in photoelectrodes and photocatalysts and how these impact upon the efficiency of solar driven water splitting, covering a range of inorganic, hybrid and organic materials. I will highlight the multi-timescale nature of the challenge – from the ultrafast recombination of excitons and polarons to the seconds time scale of water oxidation catalysis. I will in particular highlight how recent advances in materials design are enabling the solar driven generation of charges with lifetimes of milliseconds to seconds, long enough to drive interfacial charge transfer and catalysis, drawing upon examples of studies in group on metal oxides, metal-organic-frameworks, organic semiconductors, carbon nitride and gallium nitride. The mechanistic origins of the remarkably long carrier lifetimes vary between materials. However, across these materials classes, long charge carrier lifetimes are enabling substantive advances in the performance of photocatalytic devices. In each case, I will discuss the opportunities, challenges and potential for low cost solar driven hydrogen generation.
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