SNF Professorship at University of Berne
Ulrich Aschauer has been awarded an SNSF Professorship grant to continue his work on "Theoretical investigation of photocatalytic water splitting on surfaces and thin films of perovskite oxynitrides" at the University of Berne.
Certain semiconducting materials can use solar light to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. Hydrogen - when produced by this route - is an environmentally neutral, renewable energy carrier. Due to the low efficiency of the photochemical reaction, this technology has so far not been successfully commercialised. Within the scope of Ulrich Aschauer’s project the surface chemistry of so-called oxynitride materials will be studied using theoretical calculatios based on quantum mechanics. Oxynitrides are among the most promising materials for solar hydrogen production. The obtained insights will be used to design new semiconducting materials with improved efficiency. external pagemore