Abstract
Natural photosynthesis takes place at lipid bilayers. Although major progress has been achieved in understanding how it works, science is still unable to re-create an efficient, lipid-based photocatalytic membrane that can generate solar fuels. To understand what happens when a photocatalytic system is embedded in a membrane, a multidisciplinary approach is needed. First, “soapy” photosensitizers and catalysts must be prepared and characterized. These soapy molecules insert in the lipid bilayer at the right position. Second, the diffusion of these molecules in the membrane needs to be understood, as they have to meet to exchange electrons or energy. Finally, we measure the rates of excited state generation, molecular collisions, and electron transfer, as they need to match to slow down charge recombination and have the photocatalysis works correctly. In this presentation, I will highlight a few of the recent progress made in my group on the making and understanding of photocatalytic liposomes that can generate solar fuel such as CO or H2.
NWO is acknowledged for an HRSMC PhD fellowship to David Klein. This work was also supported by the EU FET Open programme project SoFiA (GAN 828838).
References:
[1] David Klein et al, Chem. Eur. J. 2021, 27, 17203-17212
[2] Santiago Rodríguez-Jiménez et al, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, 21, 9399–9412
[3] David Klein et al, Chem. Cat. Chem. 2022, DOI: 10.1002/cctc.202200484
[4] Hongwei Song et al, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, DOI:10.1021/jacs.2c06842
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