Professor Elena Jakubikova of North Carolina State University

Dr. Elena Jakubikova of the University of North Carolina will present:

"Chromophores + TiO2 + light = electricity: Designing better sensitizers with computational chemistry"

Wide bandgap semiconductors sensitized with organic or inorganic chromophores lie at the center of many devices for solar energy conversion, such as dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) or dye-sensitized photoelectrosynthesis cells (DSPECs). The first steps of the light harvesting process in such systems consist of the absorption of visible light by the dye, followed by the interfacial electron transfer between the excited dye and the semiconductor. This presentation will summarize our work focused on modeling the interfacial electron transfer processes in dye-semiconductor assemblies, highlighting our understanding of structure-property relationships that govern the excited-state kinetics of sensitizers at dye-semiconductor interfaces.