In its scientific board meeting in November, the Austrian Research Fund FWF has approved the funding proposal for a new research group “Pushing Oxide Catalysis: Atomic-Scale View at Photocharges – POP”, which has strong ties to TACO in terms of content and personnel.
The general motivation for the research group POP comes from human-made climate change and the need for greenhouse-gas-free energy sources. One such potential “green” energy source is photocatalysis, a process that occurs naturally at the surfaces of transition-metal oxides (TMOs) such as hematite (Fe2O3) or bismuth vanadate (BiVO4). Photocatalysis enables the production of hydrogen through water splitting with the aid of sunlight at the surfaces of TMOs, or the light-induced up-conversion of chemicals such as the greenhouse gas CO2. Unfortunately, these processes suffer from low efficiency.
The new research group POP aims to gain a deeper understanding of these processes at the atomic scale. The primary research questions are, therefore, to 1) find out how the interaction with defects and dopants affects the photo-charge dynamics in catalysis on TMO surfaces, and 2) to develop novel imaging techniques and computational methods enabling real-time, atomic-scale observation of photo-charge and polaron dynamics. The implementation of machine-learning software to accelerate DFT calculations will play a central role in the project. Eventually, the gained knowledge may enable an increase in the photocatalysis efficiencies and the development of next-generation photocatalysts.
Michele Reticcioli is the POP coordinator. Michele is a former TACO Co-PI in subproject P07 (PI: Cesare Franchini). He will be responsible for developing the theory and computational methods for the project. Laerte Patera, assistant professor at the University of Innsbruck, is a consortium member in the research group. In December 2023, Laerte gave a TACO colloquium talk titled “Two-dimensional photoactive frameworks: towards dynamic covalent chemistry and exciton imaging”, in which he introduced the novel atomic force microscopy methods that he will further develop and apply in POP. Finally, Giada Franceschi is an Elise Richter fellow in the Surface Physics group at TU Wien and a consortium member as well. Giada’s expertise lies in the synthesis and characterisation of model surfaces of complex oxides using pulsed laser deposition. The research group will be hosted within the Surface Physics group at TU Wien; Michele will relocate to TU Wien to conduct the research. Furthermore, Carla Verdi, former TACO Co-PI and now a fellow at the Faculty of Science, University of Sydney, Australia, and Martin Setvín, a long-term collaborator in Ulrike Diebold’s subproject P02, will serve as international cooperation partners in POP.
The funding amounts to 1.5 M€ for a period of five years. This includes one PhD position for each POP consortium member, as well as the salary of the research group coordinator, Michele Reticcioli. Details of the project, including a PR abstract and publications by the research group, will be published on the FWF Research Radar page.