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Assistant Professor of Chemistry
SNSF Prima Fellow, Branco Weiss Fellow
Murielle F. Delley studied chemistry at ETH Zurich and received her PhD in organometallic surface chemistry from ETH Zurich in 2017 under Professor Christophe Copéret. She then worked as a postdoc with Professor James M. Mayer at Yale, USA, on proton and electron transfer at interfaces. In 2020, she started her independent research at the University of Basel with an SNSF PRIMA, a Branco Weiss Society in Science Fellowship and recently with an SNSF Starting Grant. In 2023, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Inorganic Chemistry with tenure-track status in Basel.
Her research focuses on interfacial chemistry and catalysis of inorganic materials.
University of Tokyo, JP and Shinshu University, JP
Professor, School of Engineering
Kazunari Domen received his BSc, MSc, and PhD (1982) honors in Chemistry from the University of Tokyo. He then joined the Chemical Resources Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1982 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and Professor in 1996. He moved to the University of Tokyo in 2004 and was cross appointed by Shinshu University as a Special Contract Professor in 2017. He became a University Professor at the University of Tokyo in 2019.
Domen has contributed to various fields in catalysis for many decades. He especially devoted himself to photocatalytic water splitting of artificial photosynthesis as his major life work.
Sunlight-driven water splitting using particulate photocatalysts has been attracting growing interest as a means of producing renewable solar hydrogen on a large scale. A solar hydrogen production system based on 100 m2 arrayed photocatalytic water splitting panels and an oxyhydrogen gas-separation module was built, and its performance and system characteristics including safety issues were reported recently. Nevertheless, it is essential to radically improve the solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion efficiency (STH) of particulate photocatalysts and develop suitable reaction systems. In my talk, recent progress in photocatalytic materials and reaction systems for solar fuel production will be presented.
Recently, the apparent quantum yield (AQY) of overall water splitting using SrTiO3 has been improved to more than 90% at 365 nm, equivalent to an internal quantum efficiency of almost unity, by refining the preparation conditions of the photocatalyst and cocatalysts. For practical solar hydrogen production, however, it is essential to develop photocatalysts that are active under visible light. Ta3N5, Y2Ti2O5S2, TaON, and BaTaO2N were shown to be active in photocatalytic overall water splitting via one-step excitation under visible light.
It is possible to combine hydrogen evolution photocatalysts (HEPs) and oxygen evolution photocatalysts (OEPs) to split water into hydrogen and oxygen via two-step excitation. Particulate photocatalyst sheets consisting of La- and Rh-codoped SrTiO3 as the HEP and Mo-doped BiVO4 as the HEP immobilized onto Au and C layers split water into hydrogen and oxygen with STH values exceeding 1.0%. Some (oxy)chalcogenides and (oxy)nitrides with long absorption edge wavelengths are also applicable to Z-schematic photocatalyst sheets. It is also possible to combine Sm2Ti2O5S2 as HEP and BiVO4 as OEP with carbon materials such as rGO and/or CNT.
In addition to water splitting reaction to form green hydrogen, some other green fuels production will be discussed. Especially, CH4 formation with CO2 methanation will be discussed in detail.
ICN2, ES https://www.nanoesclab.com
ICREA Research Professor
Group Leader at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
Marίa Escudero Escribano graduated in Chemical Engineering from the University of Extremadura and obtained her PhD in Chemistry from the Institute of Physical Chemistry Rocasolano (Spanish National Research Council) and the Autonomous University of Madrid (2011). She then started her postdoctoral research at the Technical University of Denmark (2012-2015) and was a 'DFF: Sapere Aude Research Talent' postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University (2015-2017). She joined the University of Copenhagen in March 2017 as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in March 2017 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in January 2021. She joined the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) as an ICREA Research Professor in September 2022.
Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering
Leader of LIMNO Laboratory for Molecular Engineering of Optoelectronic Nanomaterials
Kevin Sivula studied at the University of Minnesota, where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering. He continued his studies at the University of California (Berkeley), in the research group of Prof. Jean Fréchet. During his thesis research he worked to develop strategies to control the morphology of conjugated polymer-based photovoltaic devices and gained his PhD in 2007. Sivula then joined the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces (LPI, led by Professor Michael Grätzel) at the EPFL. There he developed nanostructured films with iron oxide for hydrogen production using solar energy. He was promoted to research group leader in 2008 and in 2011 he accepted an appointment as tenure-track assistant professor at EPFL in the Institute of Chemical Science and Engineering.
Currently he is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and he leads the LIMNO lab while also teaching courses on transport phenomena, chemical engineering practicals, product design, and solar energy conversion systems.
Professor of Catalysis Engineering
Atsushi Urakawa obtained his BSc degree in Applied Chemistry at Kyushu University (Japan) with one year stay in the USA. He then moved to Europe and studied Chemical Engineering at TU Delft for his MSc degree and obtained his PhD in 2006 at ETH Zurich. He worked as Senior Scientist and Lecturer at ETH and in 2010 he joined ICIQ (Spain) as Group Leader. In 2019, he undertook a new challenge as Professor of Catalysis Engineering at ChemE, TU Delft. He is elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2016) and the recipient of JSPS Prize (2020) and The Japan Academy Medal (2021).
The Urakawa group develops novel heterogeneous catalysts and catalytic processes with the aim to minimize energy usage and negative impacts of such processes, while achieving high product yield and selectivity. They take a multi-disciplinary approach based on material science, reaction engineering and in situ / operando methodologies.
