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Artificial Photosynthesis: In this area, my group research activities will mostly focus on the development of nanoparticulate electrode with well-controlled hole diffusion length. My materials of choice will be, both binary and ternary narrow band gap metal oxide semiconductors. I choose oxide because of its immense stability in the harsh electrochemical environment. The activity of photoelectrode to generate current density is mainly limited by the high hole diffusion length which ends up in the low lifetime of holes needed to oxidize water molecule on photoelectrode surface. Here, the challenge will be to carefully optimize this parameter. A glimpse of the artificial photosynthetic cell is shown below.
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Photoelectrochemical CO2 fixation : In the current mandate, to reduce the global CO2 emission is the cornerstone of the research community. In this subject, my research group effort will be to develop cost efficient mesoporous P- type semiconductors to absorb CO2 and subsequently converted into value added adduct like methanol, methane, ethylene photoelectrochemically. The photocathodic current density and minimization of the overpotential associated with these processes will be the key to our research. Our final goal is to develop a wireless artificial leaf reactor for methanol generation as shown below.
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Physicochemical Understanding of semiconductor – light harvesting protein interface : In this project, my goal is to understand the charge transfer action of excited state protein molecule to the conduction band of semiconductor using lab-based photoelectrochemical transient hole capture experiment. A schematic of the electrode is added here for the good visualization.
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