Light-Driven Chemical Transformations

Harry Atwater (Harvard University)

ABSTRACT: 

The recent rapid, global growth of silicon photovoltaics has moved the science frontier for solar energy towards new opportunities including i) high efficiency (η > 30%) photovoltaics based on high radiative efficiency and ii) direct synthesis of energy-dense chemical fuels from sunlight, including hydrogen and products from reduction of carbon dioxide. Photonic design has opened new directions for high efficiency photovoltaics, tandem devices and luminescent solar concentrators. Materials for light harvesting, charge transport and catalytic selectivity are key building blocks fuel synthesis. Semiconductors coupled to water oxidation and reduction catalysts have enabled approaches to photoelectrochemical solar-to-hydrogen generation with >19% efficiency using artificial photosynthetic structures.  Solar-driven reduction of carbon dioxide to valuable products such as liquid fuels presents a particular challenge for selectivity in catalysis and I will describe new mechanisms for catalytic selectivity that use the optically excited states generated by light itself to create new catalytic pathways for CO₂ reduction.

BIO:

Harry Atwater is the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology.  Atwater’s scientific effort focuses on nanophotonic light-matter interactions.  His work spans fundamental nanophotonic phenomena and applications, including active wavefront shaping of light using metasurfaces, optical propulsion, quantum nanophotonics as well as solar energy conversion.

Atwater was an early pioneer in nanophotonics and plasmonics and gave a name to the field of plasmonics in 2001.  He is Chair of the LightSail Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot program. Currently Atwater is also the Director for the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA), a Department of Energy Hub program for solar fuels, and was also the founding Editor in Chief of the journal ACS Photonics.   Atwater is a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher.