Emily A. Carter (Princeton)

Artificial Photosynthesis: Revelations from Quantum Mechanics
Date
Sep 28, 2016, 4:00 pm4:00 pm
Location
Thomas Laboratory, 003
Audience
Free and open to the university community and the public.

Speakers

Emily Carter
Dean of School of Engineering and Applied Science
Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment
Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Applied and Computational Mathematics
Princeton

Details

Event Description

Splitting water and reducing carbon dioxide outside of living organisms is exceptionally difficult but terrifically important, crucial to getting us off of fossil fuels and thereby limiting climate change. I'll give an overview of my research that is engaged in determining how we can best design inorganic photoelectrocatalysts to beat plants and bacteria at their own game. No one's done so at scale, which makes the problem seriously interesting. I'll explain all the challenges, and how we go about trying to overcome them. Many of the key issues involve excitation and movement of electrons. The latter are controlled by quantum mechanics. We use quantum mechanical computer simulation methods to explore this grand challenge of our time.

Sponsor
Bonnie Bassler, Department of Molecular Biology
Event Category
Butler Seminar Series