Materials Science & Engineering Department at Michigan Technological University; John & Virginia Towers Distinguished Lecture Series, Samuel S. Mao, University of California at Berkeley, Friday December 5, 2014
11:00 am – 12:00 pm, Room 610, M&M Building
Title: Disorder-Engineered Titanium Dioxide Nanocrystals: Fundamentals and Application to Solar-Driven Hydrogen Production;
This seminar will provide an overview of recent progress in the development of earth-abundant photocatalytic materials for solar-driven production of hydrogen. The emphasis will be the realization of disorder-engineered titanium dioxide, starting with an introduction of the fundamental concept behind disorder engineering. The method of synthesizing disorder-engineered titanium dioxide nanocrystals will be presented, followed by measurements of their structural, optical, and electronic properties. Photocatalysis experiments based on solar-driven hydrogen production using disorder-engineered titanium dioxide nanocrystals, that can absorb solar energy in both visible and infrared wavelength regions, will be summarized, and the physics underlying visible light absorption as well as an increased photocatalytic efficiency of disorder-engineered titanium dioxide nanocrystals will be discussed.
Speaker Bio: Professor Samuel Mao obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 2000. He is Director of Clean Energy Engineering Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley. In 2013, he founded the Institute of New Energy, a private international research institution, after raising more than $15 million startup fund. He was also a career staff scientist at U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory between 2001 and 2013. He published 130 refereed articles, which have received over twenty-thousand (20,000) citations. He is also an inventor of more than 20 patents, and has delivered 100 plenary, keynote, or invited talks at various international conferences and leading universities. He has served as a technical committee member, program review panelist, grant evaluator, and national laboratory observer for the U.S. Department of Energy. He co-founded the First International Symposium on Transparent Conducting Materials, the First International Conference on Energy Nanotechnology, and the First International Workshop on Renewable Energy. He co-chaired Materials Research Society (MRS) annual meeting in the spring of 2011, and the International Conference on Clean Energy in 2012. He received 2011 “R&D 100” Technology Award.