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Welcome to
our group website! Group 2012/13
(Peterhouse, Cambridge, October 2012) We are interested in applying principles from the traditional field of Biological Inorganic Chemistry to Renewable Energy research. We design artificial photosynthetic systems to produce a so-called solar fuel - a sustainable fuel derived from solar energy and an effectively inexhaustible raw material. A major goal is to mimic photobiological energy generation by hybridizing enzymes and biomimetic synthetic compounds with nanostructured materials. To achieve this aim, a solar light-harvesting component is coupled to a suitable redox catalyst to drive the energetically uphill redox transformations. A current focus lies on the photocatalytic production of the high specific energy carrier hydrogen from water and we have started to explore novel routes of converting the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into valuable carbon feedstocks. We pay particular attention to solar syngas generation, which would allow us to access a sustainable carbon-based economy. Our laboratory and department house state-of-the-art facilities for our work, which covers a wide range of disciplines - from anaerobic Synthetic to Biological Chemistry, with an emphasis somewhere at the Interface of Inorganic Chemistry, Enzymology, Electro-, Photochemistry, and Materials Chemistry. We are part of three research interest groups in the department of Chemistry (Materials, Synthesis, Chemical Biology) and collaborate with other departments at Cambridge and universities in the UK, EU and USA. The group also houses the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Sustainable SynGas Chemistry. ___________________ © webmaster, 2009-2012. |
Announcements:
Conference hosted by us in September 2013 in Cambridge: ISACS12 - Challenges in Renewable Chemical Energy. A PA position is currently available (here & here). What's new? June 2013. Chia-Yu accepts position as Assistant Professor at National Cheng-Kung University. Chris W joins the group as an EPSRC postdoctoral research fellow (doctoral prize winner). Collaborative paper on 'electron transfer dynamics with cobaloximes on semiconductors' with James Durrant's group and Fezile's and Manuela's contribution published in Energy Environ. Sci. (to paper). May 2013. Hyun joins the group as a Doppler postdoctoral research associate. Janina appointed as a Kurt Hahn Scholar. William Robinson joins the group for his nanoDTC midi-project (he will also stay for his PhD). April 2013. Georgina joins the group as a Poynton PhD student. Fezile wins runner-up award for her presentation at the BP day in the Department of Chemistry. March 2013. Janina joins the group as a Doppler PhD student and Jenny arrives as a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow. Moritz awarded postdoctoral fellowship by the Isaac Newton Trust (Trinity College, Cambridge) and the German Research Foundation (DFG). February 2013. Group receives Royal Society seed-corn grant for work on "Ordered Cellulose Aerogels". January 2013. Our first open access article appears online (here). We will make more papers freely available soon. December 2012. Jenny Zhang (University of Sydney) awarded Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship and she will join us in March 2013. Group starts collaboration with WPI-AIMR November 2012. Christopher Madden joins the group as a BBSRC postdoctoral researcher on a joint project with Judy Hirst (MRC MBU, Cambridge). Nicoleta's paper on an 'electrode-immobilised molecular Co catalyst' accepted in Angewandte Chemie (to paper) October 2012. We welcome our incoming PhD students Ben Martindale, Tim Rosser, Dave Wakerley and Part III student Laurence Taylor. Group receives EPSRC pump-priming grant to start work on novel photocatalytic reactions. September 2012. Moritz awarded Schering award for best PhD dissertation at a Berlin university in the field of Chemistry. Manuela receives award for her Diploma thesis from the Austrian Chemical Society. Christine Caputo arrives and starts her work as a postdoc in the Doppler laboratory. August 2012. Christopher Windle awarded EPSRC Doctoral Prize (allowing him to work in our group in 2013/14). Moritz Kuehnel starts his work as postdoctoral research associate. Bettina Basel visits us from Erlangen, Germany, and starts her Summer internship. Group attends Olympic Games in London. Yi-Hsuan's paper on the assembly of 'efficient CoOx water oxidation electrocatalysts from nanocages' in collaboration with Dom Wright's group accepted in ChemComm (to paper). Chia-Yu's paper on a 'Cu2O/NiOx nanocomposite electrode' accepted in Chem. Sci. (to paper) July 2012. Fezile and Masaru's paper on 'selective reduction of aqueous protons with a cobaloxime catalyst under atmospheric oxygen' accepted in Angewandte Chemie as 'Hot paper' (to paper), featured on the journal cover and in the news: here. Fezile's collaborative paper with the Durrant group at Imperial College London on 'electron transfer in catalyst-modified semiconductors' accepted in Chem. Eur. J. (to paper). Collaborative paper on 'highest nuclearity polyoxotitantates' lead by Dom Wright's group and Janina's contribution published in Chem. Eur. J. (to paper) June 2012. Georgina Hutton awarded with a Cambridge Australia Poynton PhD scholarship. Georgina will join us from the University of Sydney in April next year. May 2012. Masaru's paper on 'photoelectrochemical water oxidation with photosystem II on a mesoporous ITO electrode' appears in J. Am. Chem. Soc. (to paper). Collaborative paper on 'encapsulated bromide in a polyoxotitanate host' with Dom Wright's group and Janina's contribution published in Chem. Sci. (to paper) and highlighted in Chemistry World (to article). <><> |