Solar to Fuel

Sustainable growth demands cost-competitive, renewable approaches for energy production. Sunlight offers an unmatched reservoir of energy that can be harnessed to power the production of fuels and commodity chemicals in order to sustain human society in the long term. However, stable, efficient and scalable materials and systems that have proven suitable for this challenge remain missing.

In this Solar to Fuel special topic, we focus on recent scientific and engineering developments in the production of fuels using sunlight. Specific emphasis will be placed on photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic materials synthesis and characterization, study of their interfaces, and realization of lab to large-scale devices. We will collect contributions from leading experts in the field to spotlight recent trends and progress in the field of solar to fuel conversion and production.

Topics covered include, but are not limited to:

• Photo(electro)chemical synthesis of fuels
• Novel materials and architectures for solar to fuel conversion
• Mechanistic studies of photo(electro)catalytic systems
• Degradation studies of solar to fuel conversion materials
• Interface engineering and charge carrier transport across interfaces

Guest Editors

Alexander Cowan (University of Liverpool)

Masakazu Sugiyama (University of Tokyo)

Francesca Toma (Lawrence Berkeley Lab)

Lianzhou Wang (University of Queensland)

Kai Xi (Cambridge)