The identification of an artificial photosynthesis method to turn solar energy into globally usable amounts of fuel is considered one of the most important challenges today. Photochemical water splitting with particle-based systems has the greatest potential to achieve this goal. Currently, the development of such systems is limited by intrinsic materials issues and by an incomplete understanding of photochemical charge separation on the nanoscale. This talk will discuss these obstacles and present ways to overcome them using recent examples from the literature and from the author’s own laboratory.
Frank Osterloh (University of California, Davis)