Kinetic challenges in solar energy conversion

Speaker: Professor James Durrant 

The development of low cost, stable and efficient materials for solar energy conversion is a key scientific challenge for addressing global sustainability and energy supply. Silicon solar cells and plant photosynthesis provide two examples of successful solar conversion systems, and inspirations for my talk. My talk will rather focus on the challenge of developing new solar conversion materials, and particularly how unravelling the charge carriers dynamics in such materials can aid materials and device design. After introducing solar energy conversion, I will address the challenge of developing printable solar cells – including both organic and hybrid organic / inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells. I will then move on to address the challenge of solar driven fuel synthesis, often called artificial photosynthesis, with metal oxide based photoelectrodes. In all cases, I will focus on how transient laser based spectroscopies, on timescales from femtoseconds to seconds, can provide insights into the charge separation, recombination, transport and fuel synthesis processes which underlie materials and device function.

For more details of my group’s work, and the centres we work with see: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/j.durrant http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/plasticelectronicshttp://www.specific.eu.com/ www.solarfuelsnetwork.com

This talk is part of the Cavendish Physical Society series.