Optimising solar photochemical energy conversion by learning from nature (POTENtIAl)

Started

Renewable Energy Sources(Solar Energy, Photovoltaics)

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Chemical Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Professor J Nelson
Department of Physics (the Blackett Laboratory)
Imperial College London

Standard

EPSRC

01 September 2024

31 August 2029

60 months

£2,119,566

Unknown

London

Frontier Grants - Advanced

Professor J Nelson, Department of Physics (the Blackett Laboratory), Imperial College London

Avoiding dangerous climate change is a primary challenge facing society. New solar energy conversion technologies are needed, in addition to silicon, to expand renewable generation and meet this challenge. Molecular electronic materials are chemically tuneable, versatile and low-impact, and have recently achieved solar-to-electric conversion efficiencies near 20%. Greater performance is possible if non-radiative losses of charge carriers can be reduced. In POTENtIAl I aim to develop a framework to design molecular solar energy converters with higher radiative efficiency. I will exploit the remarkable parallels with natural photosystems, which, from early measurements of luminescence, show promising performance. My hypothesis is that nonradiative losses can be reduced in artificial molecular photovoltaics by mimicking structural and electronic features of natural photosystems. To relate structure of the molecular assembly to efficiency and loss pathways, I will investigate recently discovered versions of PS I and PS II that show photochemical action using low-energy infrared photons. The specific objectives are: To develop a coarse grained model of exciton generation in a molecular assembly coupled to onward charge transfer reactions, that can simulate the flux - potential output of molecular PV or PS systems; to measure (electro)luminescence from different designs of PV devices and different varieties of photosystem to establish their radiative efficiency; to interpret luminescence from both types of system and use the model to identify loss pathways and so explain the surprising behaviour of recently discovered PS and molecular PV systems that appear to operate with lower thermodynamic driving force; and to design and engineer PV structures that minimise non-radiative losses and, potentially, improve photochemical stability, using insights gained from the PS analysis. The results should help design high performance molecular PV forsemi transparent and tandems

25/06/25