Meeting society's demand for energy using solar energy requires both solar electricity and the production of fuels using sunlight. Photosynthesis, which supplied the energy stored in fossil fuels, provides an attractive paradigm for solar fuel production. Such a solar fuel system requires antennas to absorb solar energy efficiently, artificial reaction centers, which are molecular scale photovoltaics, and catalysts which use the redox potential produced by the reaction centers to oxidize water as a source of electrons and reduce a substrate to a fuel. An efficient system must use as much of the solar spectrum as practical; this can be achieved using a tandem architecture with two antenna-reaction centers. Catalysts must be both efficient and comprised of abundant, inexpensive materials. These requirements are met by photosynthetic catalysts, but doing so with human-made materials is difficult. Design principles for artificial photosynthetic fuel production and some examples of current progress will be discussed.

Bio-inspired design of a solar water splitting system

244th National Meeting (2012)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.