Date: Wednesday, February 7
Time: 12pm
Location: EN 3076
Speaker: Brandon Durant, Department of Chemistry
Title of Talk: Solar Driven Redox Flow Battery
As solar energy increases its penetration into the energy capacities worldwide, effective storage (because of its the intermittent nature) and increased collection efficiency (because of the loss mechanisms inherent in widely used commercial solar cells) are needed for effective improvement. Regarding energy storage, one option is redox flow battery technology that has demonstrated greater than 85% round trip energy storage efficiencies. With appropriate redox potentials and electron transfer kinetics, the theoretical dual heterojunction solar cell efficiency of 35% could potentially be realized. Here we will present the fundamental studies of single crystal n-type wide band gap semiconductors for photooxidation, and p-type narrow bandgap semiconductors for photoreduction of leading redox flow battery species.