At the ACS meeting in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to attend to two incredible seminars on solar fuel by Dr. Harry Gray and Dr. Daniel Nocera. I'll let Amanda tell you guys about Dr. Nocera's talk since she wasn't able to attend Dr. Gray's...
Just a quick background on Harry Gray: He was the keynote speaker at Creative Collaborations two years ago and he definitely brought down the house with his vision of utilizing the sun to turn our lives around. He is currently the Arnold O. Beckham Professor of Chemistry at CalTech where he is working to design a cheap fuel cell that can produce hydrogen gas from water. Now, there are fuel cells that can effectively perform this chemistry, but the problem is the expense of the materials used. Platinum is not cheap, so his lab is focused on finding alternative materials that get the job done.
There are three main components of the fuel cell: the oxidizer, the reducer, and a proton membrane. What is really amazing is how much of an international effort the synthesis of each part has become. He has developed an intense network across the United States, with Canada, and even countries in Europe to work on individual components of the fuel cell. His team at CalTech is specifically interested in replacing platinum as a fuel cell material and they had enormous success using cobalt. A team in Canada is currently working on creating the proton membrane. This huge effort is being funded in part by NSF.
To hear more about Harry Gray's work, check out this full-length video of one of his seminars last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwqVsRLHq24
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I found the brief discussing regarding solar paints in the lecture you posted to be quite interesting. The paints are applied to steel framed buildings today are often limited by their color, and subsequently, ability to absorb the most abundant forms of light energy. The solar paints in use now are based on Ruthenium, a molecule which yields orange and red paints which are unattractive and inefficient relative to other colors in terms of solar absorption. Dr. Gray and his colleague developed paints based on Gallium which comes in a range of green and blue colors which absorb more light from our sun than do reds and greens. This is evident in the evolved color of most plants to be green. Furthermore, these gallium paints are made from abundant minerals and organic materials which are less carbon intensive than the mining of rare metals.
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