[E&E seminars] Tomorrow: Nate Lewis - MITEI Seminar Series

[Jameson Twomey]

Please join us tomorrow, Tuesday, March 10th, as we welcome Nate  
Lewis, the George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry at Caltech, the  
sixth speaker of the 2008-2009 MITEI Seminar Series.

Sunlight-driven hydrogen formation by membrane-supported  
photoelectrochemical water splitting
Nate Lewis

Date: March 10th
Time: 4:15-5:45 - Light refreshments to follow
Location: 66-110 (Landau Building, 25 Ames Street)

Abstract

Although sunlight is the most abundant energy resource, a complete  
energy system must involve the capture, conversion and storage of  
sunlight.  Other than nuclear processes, the most energy dense form of  
energy storage is in the form of chemical bonds.  Nature performs this  
process using photosynthesis however CO2 is at a rather low  
concentration in the atmosphere and hence the mass flux of CO2 to the  
surface of the earth will provide an ultimate upper bound on the rate  
and therefore the efficiency of carbon-based photosynthesis.  Water,  
however, is available in a concentrated liquid form and thus is a more  
readily reducible substrate to produce fuel from the sun.  Hence photo- 
chemically derived water-splitting is an attractive option to provide  
globally-scalable solar energy capture, conversion and storage  
processes.

This talk will discuss the research frontier involved with the  
development of an integrated system based on semiconductor nanowires  
that act as artificial photosynthetic pigments, which bridge a  
membrane and are coupled to catalysts that both reduce water to  
hydrogen and oxidize water to oxygen.  All these components in an  
artificial photosynthetic system must work together and in synergy for  
the entire process to be successful.  Our research efforts have  
focused primarily on the development and implementation of  
semiconductor nanorod arrays that can provide the ability to use  
impure, low-cost, stable inorganic light absorbers in the presence of  
organic, plastic, processable polymer membranes, to provide the  
capture and conversion steps and couple to the catalytic steps needed  
for a solar-based water-splitting system.

About the Speaker

Dr. Nathan Lewis, George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry, has been  
on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology since 1988  
and has served as Professor since 1991. He has also served as the  
Principal Investigator of the Beckman Institute Molecular Materials  
Resource Center at Caltech since 1992. From 1981 to 1986, he was on  
the faculty at Stanford, as an assistant professor from 1981 to 1985  
and as a tenured Associate Professor from 1986 to 1988. Dr. Lewis  
received his Ph.D in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of  
Technology.

Dr. Lewis has been an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, a Camille and Henry  
Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and a Presidential Young Investigator. He  
received the Fresenius Award in 1990, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry  
in 1991, the Orton Memorial Lecture award in 2003, the Princeton  
Environmental Award in 2003 and the Michael Faraday Medal of the Royal  
Society of Electrochemistry in 2008. He is currently the Editor-in- 
Chief of Energy & Environmental Science.  He has published over 300  
papers and has supervised approximately 60 graduate students and  
postdoctoral associates.

We hope you will join us!

We thank CERA for its sponsorship of the MITEI Seminar Series.
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