Magic of Materials

Royce Cambridge is the centrepiece for industrial engagement with the scientists and engineers working across the materials sciences on the West Cambridge Science and Technology Campus. Royce supports research and innovation through a network of open access deposition, fabrication and characterisation facilities.

One of the biggest leaps of humanity, enabled by the Industrial Revolution, is the centralised use of energy technologies and the resulting convenience and ubiquitous use of electricity. Man-made power generation reaches efficiencies of 50-60% in commercially available technologies, dwarfing the 3-6% of photosynthesis - the nature-evolved solution. The costs, though, are large - power generation is one of the most polluting and nature-exploiting sectors humanity has created. So the question for us is, can we still learn from nature to make power generation and energy technologies sustainable?

Without the protection of our atmosphere and magnetosphere, solar cells on satellites and space exploration payloads are exposed to space radiation like high energy particles, which will degrade their power generation performance. Radiation tolerant solar cells made of ultra-thin III-V materials are desired for extended missions in highly damaging environments, along with their advantages of high specific power, weight/cost reduction and flexible form factors.

To limit the future global warming to 1.5°, we need to transition to an industry that uses abundant and non-polluting resources to provide us with energy, food and medicines without the use of fossil fuels. To design an alternative system scientist are inspired by nature, where for example, leaves on a plant use solar power to convert simple molecules into the building blocks of life. In this seminar Tessel will explain what we can learn from nature to develop artificial photosynthetic systems to achieve sustainable pathways for the production of solar fuels and pharmaceuticals.