Mengyan Shen
University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA
Title: Synthesizing hydrocarbons from carbon dioxide and water with metal nanostructures and solar energy
Biography
Biography: Mengyan Shen
Abstract
For many years, researchers had endeavored to replicate natural photosynthesis converting carbon dioxide and water to hydrocarbons and carbohydrates. In their approaches, the efficiency of solar energy storage was very low and there had been no significant progress towards large-scale and highly efficient artificial photosynthesis. Pulsed laser-assisted etching is a simple but effective method for making small regular structures directly onto a solid surface. We have successfully fabricated sub micro- or nano-meter sized structures on different solid surfaces immersed in liquids with femtosecond laser pulse irradiations. We can control the experimental conditions to design and make nanostructures in different materials and on the surfaces with different morphologies. We have combined the plasmonic and the catalytic properties of metal nanostructures to obtain an efficient artificial photosynthesis, converting carbon dioxide and water into hydrocarbons for solar energy storage. In our experiments, we have discovered a highly efficient artificial photosynthetic process that utilizes cobalt (Co) or iron (Fe) nanostructures formed by the femtosecond laser pulse irradiation. The details of this discovery will be introduced and discussed in the talk.
