RQMP Research Seminar

Sun in bottles: photocatalytic plasmonic materials

Jérôme Claverie

Département de chimie
Université de Sherbrooke

Heterogeneous photocatalysis is now widely used as a process for remediation of fluids. It is also the subject of numerous studies for the 'green' generation of hydrogen, and solar fuels obtained by photoreduction of CO2. Nevertheless, the existing photocatalysts all have activities that are too low to allow the use of these techniques to be envisaged on a large scale. In plasmonic photocatalysis, the activity of photocatalysts is increased by adding a plasmonic particle to the system. Several mechanisms explain this increase in activity, mechanisms that will be reviewed during this presentation. In this presentation, we will explore several novel plasmonic photocatalytic systems and attempt to establish structure-activity relationships. A commercial-scale application (remediation) will also be presented.