The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning / Mcgill University

Other

Md Golam Kibria

Zetian Mi

Mohammad Faqrul Alam Chowdhury

Edward Hartley Sargent

David Sinton

Cao-Thang Dinh

Thomas Burdyny

Ali Seifitokaldani

Mohammad Faqrul Chowdhury

An abrupt interface electroreduction catalyst includes a porous gas diffusion layer and a catalyst layer providing a sharp reaction interface. The electroreduction catalyst can be used for converting COinto a target product such as ethylene. The porous gas diffusion layer can be hydrophobic and configured for contacting gas-phase COwhile the catalyst layer is disposed on and covers a reaction interface side of the porous gas diffusion layer. The catalyst layer has another side contacting an electrolyte and can be hydrophilic, composed a metal such as Cu and is sufficiently thin to prevent diffusion limitations of the reactant in the electrolyte and enhance selectivity for the target product. The electroreduction catalyst can be made by vapor deposition methods and can be used for electrochemical production of ethylene in reaction system.

Catalysts with sharp reaction interface for electrochemical CO2 reduction with enhanced selectivity

InGaN offers a route to high efficiency overall water splitting under one-step photo-excitation. Further, the chemical stability of metal-nitrides supports their use as an alternative photocatalyst. However, the efficiency of overall water splitting using InGaN and other visible light responsive photocatalysts has remained extremely low despite prior art work addressing optical absorption through band gap engineering. Within this prior art the detrimental effects of unbalanced charge carrier extraction/collection on the efficiency of the four electron-hole water splitting reaction have remained largely unaddressed. To address this growth processes are presented that allow for controlled adjustment and establishment of the appropriate Fermi level and/or band bending in order to allow the photochemical water splitting to proceed at high rate and high efficiency. Beneficially, establishing such material surface charge properties also reduces photo-corrosion and instability under harsh photocatalysis conditions.

Methods and systems relating to photochemical water splitting

Amongst the candidates for very high efficiency electronics, solid state light sources, photovoltaics, and photoelectrochemical devices, and photobiological devices are those based upon metal-nitride nanowires. Enhanced nanowire performance typically require heterostructures, quantum dots, etc which requirement that these structures are grown with relatively few defects and in a controllable reproducible manner. Additionally flexibility according to the device design requires that the nanowire at the substrate may be either InN or GaN. Methods of growing relatively defect free nanowires and associated structures for group IIIA-nitrides are presented without the requirement for foreign metal catalysts, overcoming the non-uniform growth of prior art techniques and allowing self-organizing quantum dot, quantum well and quantum dot-in-a-dot structures to be formed. Such metal-nitride nanowires and quantum structure embedded nanowires support a variety of devices including but not limited to very high efficiency electronics, solid state light sources, photovoltaics, and photoelectrochemical devices, and photobiological devices.

High efficiency broadband semiconductor nanowire devices

Metal-nitride nanowires are amongst the candidates for very high efficiency electronics, solid state light sources, photovoltaics, photoelectrochemical devices, and photobiological devices. Enhanced performance typically requires heterostructures, quantum dots, etc within structures that are grown with relatively few defects and in a controllable reproducible manner. Additionally device design flexibility requires that the nanowire at the substrate be either InN or GaN. Methods of growing relatively defect free nanowires and associated structures for group IIIA-nitrides are presented without foreign metal catalysts thereby overcoming the non-uniform growth of prior art techniques and allowing self-organizing quantum dot, quantum well and quantum dot-in-a-dot structures to be formed, thereby supporting variety of high efficiency devices.

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Montreal, Canada

Md Golam Kibria