Seminars

Metal fuels have been proposed as advanced storage and transport systems for clean energy, because of their inherently low safety risk and high energy densities. To ensure a clean metal fuel energy cycle, metal fuel utilization products, i.e., metal oxide powders, need to be captured and cyclically reduced back into metal fuel powder via advanced technology that is powered by renewable energy.

In the dawning age of sustainability, energy harvesting and dissipation at interfaces play a crucial role for processes that feed and fuel our modern societies. At the atomic scale, the vibrational lifetime of small molecular adsorbates can provide detailed information about the molecular dynamics of energy exchange with the surface [1].

Abstract:  Many industrial chemical processes involve a high-energy demand (often still derived from fossil fuels), toxic reactants, and the production of high amounts of waste. Therefore, the development of more efficient, less hazardous technologies, based on renewable energies, has become one of the most challenging topics for chemical synthesis.

The intriguing prospects of molecular electronics, nanotechnology, biomaterials, and the aim to close the gap between synthetic and biological molecular systems are important ingredients to study the cooperative action of molecules in the self-assembly towards functional supramolecular materials and systems.

Nanostructured metals and semiconductors are promising building blocks for next generation solar energy conversion devices at low cost. From the optical perspective, nanostructure (NS) ensembles constitute a new class of metamaterial, where the optical properties of the ensemble are tuned by the individual NS type, geometry and collective arrangement.