Advanced Materials for Energy and Water Applications

Development and characterization of advanced materials is a critical component in achieving energy and water sustainability in urban centers. With this in mind, this research thrust area will support energy and water sustainability by proposing two subprojects for the design of porous TiO₂ for high-efficiency photovoltaics, and photoactive metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and zeolites, heterojunction nanorod photocatalysts, and bioinspired materials for water treatment/purification. The Advanced Materials for High-Efficiency Photovoltaics subproject will focus on incorporating MOFs into organic photovoltaics leveraging the advantages of inorganic and organic solar cells. Advanced Materials for Sustainable Water Treatment subproject will develop/redesign three types of advanced materials for sustainable and high-efficiency water treatment: (a) singlet oxygen photosensitizers with strong absorbance in the visible range using either MOFs or zeolites as the carriers to maximize the loading of photosensitizers and their contact with the pollutants in water, (b) semiconductor photocatalysts of high efficiencies utilizing perovskite structured p-n junction nanorods to facilitate the charge separation and enhance the interfacial reaction kinetics by surface modification, and (c) carbon-nanomaterials-based membranes/networks for solar-driven membrane distillation applications by creating a multiscale interrelated computational framework and validating with experiments.