Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

Artificial photosynthesis represents a promising pathway toward sustainable fuel production, which includes reactions such as water splitting, CO₂ reduction, and organic oxidations to value-added products. A fundamental understanding of the material properties is needed to provide insights into the factors affecting light absorption, catalysis, or degradation mechanisms, which are key for translating this technology from the laboratory scale to practical systems. Accordingly, this symposium will focus on advances in our understanding of the material properties, interfaces, and surfaces of emerging, established, and prospective semiconductors during photochemical and photoelectrochemical reactions or in comparable environments. As such, submissions are particularly welcome on topics including operando material characterization, material and interface modeling, spectroscopic insights into charge recombination, charge transfer and reaction kinetics, and new approaches to material design and discovery. These considerations are applicable to most light absorber families, therefore focused sessions will be dedicated to traditional (oxide, carbon nitride) photo- and photoelectrocatalysts, as well as to chalcogenides, metal halide perovskites, and polymer materials with good prospects. We also welcome submissions from the wider photovoltaics and optoelectronics fields with an emphasis on materials studied under operation in relatively harsh environments of elevated humidity or under reducing/oxidizing atmospheres. The symposium aims to attract a broad audience of researchers working in solar energy conversion on thin film, quantum dot, and other nanostructured light harvesting materials studied in solution and gas-phase environments, making it a fertile ground for cross-disciplinary exchanges that might inspire new material design and characterization directions in solar fuel synthesis.

Topics will include:

• Advances in photocatalysis and photoelectrocatalysis
• Understanding and trajectory of oxide materials in solar fuel production
• Carbon nitride and carbonaceous photocatalysts
• Chalcogenides and halide perovskites in photo(electro)catalysis or other aqueous/high humidity/reducing/oxidizing environments
• Other earth-abundant, emerging materials for photocatalysis and photoelectrocatalysis
• Spectroscopic insights into charge recombination, charge transfer and reaction kinetics
• Degradation mechanisms and passivation strategies, insights into the semiconductor-electrolyte interface
• Approaches to material design and discovery

• A tutorial complementing this symposium is tentatively planned.

Invited Speakers:

• Demetra Achilleos (University College Dublin, Ireland)
• Joel Ager (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
• Fiona Beck (The Australian National University, Australia)
• Katharina Brinkert (University of Warwick, United Kingdom)
• Sonya Calnan (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Germany)
• James Durrant (Swansea University, United Kingdom)
• Sixto Giménez (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
• Ronen Gottesman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
• Anna Hankin (Imperial College London, United Kingdom)
• Robert Hoye (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
• Ji-Wook Jang (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea)
• Prashant Kamat (University of Notre Dame, USA)
• Tianquan Lian (Emory University, USA)
• Jingshan Luo (Nankai University, China)
• Jonathan Major (University of Liverpool, United Kingdom)
• Aditya Mohite (Rice University, USA)
• Annamaria Pettrozza (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy)
• David Tilley (University of Zurich, Switzerland)
• Aron Walsh (Imperial College London, United Kingdom)
• Yanfa Yan (The University of Toledo, USA)

Symposium Organizers