Research Synopsis

The research of our photochemistry group focuses on solar energy as one of the most promising forms of renewable energy and aims to solve the global crisis of climate change concerning our human survival.  We aim to transform cheap and ubiquitous substances including H₂O, CO₂, N₂, or lignin into valuable fuels or value-added chemicals such as H₂, CO, CH₃OH, NH₃, etc with sunlight and some “chemical magic”.  One of the most important advantages for the students being trained in our research group is getting to learn the “chemical magic”, a.k.a. the understanding of fundamental electron transfer processes through state-of-the-art spectroscopic techniques in our laboratory. Students and Postdocs in our photochemistry group will be immersed in the following research topics:

1.       Energy-demanding organic photoredox catalysis and the underlying photochemistry of visible light harvesting molecular photocatalysts

2.       Solar fuels production and the underlying photoinduced electron transfer mechanisms           

3.       Photoelectrochemical devices for artificial photosynthesis

Our independent research is also made possible through very fruitful collaborations:

·         Gerald J. Meyer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), USA

·         Renato N. Sampaio, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), USA

·         Ludovic Troian-Gautier, UCLouvain, Belgian

·         Matthew V. Sheridan, Soochow University, China

·         Jianli Hua, East China University of Science and Technology, China

·         Baojiang Jiang, Heilongjiang University, China

·         Jia Guo, Fudan University, China

·         Zhang-Jie Shi, Fudan University, China