"Nanocarbon Materials for Solar Energy Conversion Schemes"

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

12:00pm | Schiciano Auditorium - Side B

Presenter

Dirk M. Guldi , Professor, Department of Chemistry and Pharmacology

Carbon is the key to many technological applications that have become indispensable in our daily life.  Altering the periodic binding motifs in networks of sp3-, sp2-, and sp-hybridized C-atoms is the conceptual starting point for a wide palette of carbon allotropes.  To this end, the past two decades have served as a test-bed for measuring the physico-chemical properties of low-dimensional carbon with the advent of fullerenes (0D), followed in chronological order by carbon nanotubes (1D), carbon nanohorns, and, most recently, by graphene (2D). These species are now poised for use in catalysis.

Expanding global needs for energy have led to a significant effort to develop alternatives to fossil fuels.  While alternative sources for energy are already in use, they comprise a small percentage of the energy demands needed to carry us through the 21st century.  No single source will solve the global needs, but the development of photocatalysis has vast potential as a point-of-use power source.

I report on our efforts regarding a unifying strategy to use the unprecedented charge transfer chemistry of 0D fullerenes, the ballistic conductance of 1D carbon nanotubes, and the high mobility of charge carriers in 2D graphene, together in a groundbreaking approach to solving a far-reaching challenge, that is, the efficient use of the abundant light energy around us.  For example, hybrid materials based on nanocarbons and metaloxides are the ideal design for realizing breakthroughs in high photon conversion efficiencies suitable for the catalysis of water.

Dirk M. Guldi completed both his undergraduate studies (1988) and PhD (1990) at the University of Cologne (Germany). Following postdoctoral appointments at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA), the Hahn-Meitner Institute Berlin (1992), and Syracuse University, he joined the faculty of the Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory in 1995.  He was promoted a year later from assistant to associate professional specialist, and remained affiliated to Notre Dame until 2004.  Since 2004, he is Full Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen.  Since 2013, Dirk M. Guldi is Associate Editor of Nanoscale, the RSC journal focused on experimental and theoretical research in all areas of nanotechnology and nanoscience, and he has been named among the world’s 2014 & 2015 Highly Cited Researchers by Thomson Reuters.

Since 2004, he has authored or co-authored more than 300 peer-reviewed articles on the fundamental structural and electronic requirements for ultrafast charge transport and optical gating in carbon nanostructure arrays of donor-acceptor ensembles and in nanostructured thin films to address aspects that correspond to the optimization and fine-tuning of dynamics and / or efficiencies of solar energy conversion.