Jing Gu, Ph.D.

Email

Primary Email: [email protected]

Phone/Fax

Primary Phone: 46642

Building/Location

5500 Campanile Dr
San Diego, CA 92182
Mail Code: Links

Bio

The growing need for clean and renewable energy has motivated the development of deployable systems to harvest and store earth's abundant solar energy resources. One promising approach is to collect and store solar energy within chemical bonds by forming fuels such as hydrogen and alcohols (solar fuels). This approach is similar to that of the natural photosynthetic process and thus has been dubbed "artificial photosynthesis." An example of this process is by utilizing the semiconductor as both the light absorber as well as the catalyst to split water into H2 and O2. The ultimate goal of these efforts is to develop a standalone photoelectrochemical cell in which water reduction and oxidation reactions occur efficiently under photo induced bias (ideally 1 sun), precluding the introduction of external electricity. In order to achieve this goal, the integration of stable light absorbing materials and effective catalysts to enhance the interfacial kinetics and fundamental mechanistic understanding of this coupled water splitting system still necessitate further explorations. In my lab, the majority of research focuses on two areas of solar energy conversion: 1) Development of light absorber-catalyst artificial photosynthesis assembles; 2) Understanding the electron and energy transfer mechanism in light harvesting systems

Areas of Specialization

Inorganic Chemistry, Renewable Energy