Redox probes for fundamental understanding of the CO2 reduction photo-electrocatalysts

The photo-electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 (CO2RR) to CO, CH4, HCOOH and other short chain alcohols holds great promise as these reaction products have high industrial-value. But current CO2RR electrodes lack efficiency and selectivity towards a certain product and yield mixtures of many. Since many of these electrodes constitute a semiconductor material, the current efforts in our lab are directed towards developing a fundamental understanding of the semiconductor|electrolyte interface to see if selectivity can be introduced in the CO2RR products. Knowing the electronic band edges of these semiconductors hence becomes an important study.  

In the project the master student will be working with thin films of TiO2 and ZnO to investigate the use of different redox probes as a strategy to locate their band edges. A systematic study of the effect of film thickness, solution concentrations and pH will be done using cyclic voltammetry experiments. The entire project will be carried out at the imec facilities.