Our research group at Yale designs and demonstrates efficient, stable, and cost-effective photoelectrochemical (PEC) devices.

For that, we need to understand the non-equilibrium light-driven chemical catalysis or materials synthesis processes, involving charge separation, charge transfer, and chemical transport at a PEC interface.

For such molecular-semiconductor hybrid systems, the timescale of light-induced charge separation is much faster than redox catalysis. Besides, ab initio calculations for semiconductor/liquid interfaces are far too complicated. We aspire to answer fundamental questions, which studying molecular systems alone cannot fully address.

We employ catalysis, transport science, and continuum modeling, integrated under the multi-scale/digital-twin framework, to elucidate and design photocatalysts that operate efficiently in a practical reactor environment.