Dr. Santosh K. Suram
Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis
California Institute of Technology
Monday, November 23 at 11AM
MRDC Building, Suite 3515

Abstract

The thrust for accelerated discovery of materials has resulted in surge of research in high-throughput prediction of materials properties and high-throughput experimentation of vast material libraries. The High Throughput Experimentation (HTE) group at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP, http://solarfuelshub.org/), performs accelerated discovery of earth-abundant photoabsorbers and electrocatalysts for solar fuels applications using custom built high-throughput (HiTp) pipelines for the synthesis, screening and characterization of (photo)electrochemical materials. In this presentation, I shall introduce the various screening instruments developed with specific examples of their application to materials libraries with emphasis on discovery of photoanodes and electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction.

Discovery of efficient photoanodes and electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is of critical importance to enable solar fuels technologies, as it is the only scalable anodic reaction to pair with the cathodic fuel-forming reaction(s). I shall present the discovery of a novel quaternary oxide dark OER catalyst, and discovery of fundamental correlations between redox potentials and OER catalytic activity using HiTp and materials informatics approaches. Metal oxides comprise the most stable class of photoanode materials, but no known material that meets the demanding requirements of low band gap energy, photoelectrocatalysis of the oxygen evolution reaction, and stability under highly oxidizing conditions has been reported previously. The rapid discovery of solar fuels photoanodes that meet the above requirements and unprecedented datasets relating experimental and computational results obtained using combinatorial materials synthesis, HiTp photoelectrochemistry, and HiTp optical spectroscopy in conjunction with electronic structure calculations shall be highlighted.

Biography

Dr. Suram’s research interests are in accelerated discovery of materials by combining high-throughput experimentation and materials informatics methods. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science Engineering at Iowa State University. He is currently working as a research scientist at Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, Caltech where his focus is on materials discovery for solar fuels applications and development of materials informatics methods for combinatorial materials science.