Research Interests:
Global climate change and renewable energy are issues that are at the forefront of national and international debate. Finding clean, carbon-neutral sources of energy is one of the greatest technological challenges we face in the scientific community today. In the search for abundant, clean, and renewable energy, one obvious place to look is the sun. Photosensitizers are molecules that absorb sunlight and use that energy to drive a (useful) chemical reaction. Solar fuels photochemistry utilizes photosensitizers to oxidize or reduce a catalyst, which can then go on to catalyze fuel forming reactions, allowing solar energy to be stored as chemical energy. The drawback of this chemistry is that a majority of photosensitizers incorporate rare second and third row metals, whose low abundance limits their use in large-scale applications. Our research group is focused on developing new types of chromophores that incorporate first row transition metals. Our goal is to use these chromophores to sensitize solar fuels reactions such as photocatalytic water oxidation, water reduction, or carbon dioxide reduction.
Contact Information:
If you are a student who is interested in learning more about our research or are interested in joining our group please contact:
Dr. Catherine McCusker
Office: Brown Hall 463
Research Lab: Brown Hall 404
Tel: 423-439-4306