June 24, 2016 at 11:10 a.m. Professor Lionel Vayssieres, of Xi’an Jiaotong University, will be presenting “Quantum-confined oxide heteronanostructures: Low-cost design, electronic structure, interfacial properties & device applications for solar energy conversion”.
Speaker: Professor Lionel Vayssieres
International Research Center for Renewable Energy (IRCRE), Xi’an Jiaotong University
Day & Time: Friday, June 24, 2016
11:10 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Location: Room BA 1200
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Junho Jeong
Refreshments will be served prior to the lecture.
Abstract: Given that conventional technologies which attempt to improve the performance of existing materials and devices for solar energy conversion and solar fuels generation by further development along the same incremental approach are reaching their limits, it is crucial to develop novel materials where bulk limitations are overcome by changing the fundamental underlying physics and chemistry, by e.g. nanostructuring design and quantum confinement effects. As important is a comprehensive fundamental and applied knowledge of their interfacial properties and electronic structure in relation with their structural and optical properties to quantitatively optimize their efficiency. Our strategy to address such crucial requirements is to fabricate materials and devices based on metal oxide (hetero)nanostructures consisting of surface chemistry-controlled quantum dots and rods building-blocks utilizing low-cost and large scale aqueous chemical growth. The electronic structure and structural, optical, and photoelectrochemical properties of such novel visible light-active oxide semiconductors based on vertically oriented quantum rod-arrays have been thoroughly investigated at synchrotron radiation facilities by X-ray spectroscopies. Direct correlation between dimensionality and surface chemistry, bandgap and band edges, orbital character and symmetry, surfaces states, electrical and defect properties have been unraveled and will be demonstrated on various oxide structures of high relevance for this field. An overview of decades of achievements as well as recent advances in novel materials design strategy will be demonstrated along with the latest breakthrough in highly efficient structure for low cost solar hydrogen generation by direct water splitting at neutral pH using the largest free natural resources on Earth, e.g. the Sun and seawater.
Biography: Born in 1968, Prof. Vayssieres obtained a MSc in Physical Chemistry in 1990 and a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry in 1995 from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France for his research work on the Interfacial & thermodynamic growth control of metal oxide nanoparticles in aqueous solutions. He has been invited as a visiting scientist at: UT Austin; the UNESCO Centre for Macromolecules & Materials, Stellenbosch University and iThemba LABS, South Africa; the Glenn T. Seaborg Center, Chemical Sciences Division, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Texas Materials Institute; The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland; the University of Queensland, Australia, and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was an independent scientist at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Japan for 8 years. He has authored 100+ publications in major international journals and book series cited 9150+ times since the year 2000 (4500+ since 2011, Google Scholar); Top 1% Scientists in Materials Science (Thomson Reuters). All time 8 ESI Highly Cited papers (5 as first and corresponding author) in Materials Science, Chemistry, Physics, and Environment/Ecology. He has given 344 talks in 30 countries: 166 lectures at international conferences/workshops (45 plenary/keynote, 98 invited, 21 contributed, 2 tutorials) including one of the last MRS Spring Symposium X lecture held in San Francisco in 2015 as well as 178 seminars at universities, governmental and/or industrial research institutes. He is currently a full time 1000-Talent Professor, co-founder and scientific director of the International Research Center for Renewable Energy (IRCRE) at Xi’an Jiaotong University, China as well as, since 2003, a guest scientist at the Chemical Sciences Division at Berkeley National Lab and the founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Nanotechnology.