SENECA Talk 3: Photocatalytic water splitting to produce green hydrogen and fuels on a large scale

About the Speaker

Kazunari Domen received B.S. (1976), M.S. (1979), and Ph.D. (1982) honors in chemistry from the University of Tokyo. Dr. Domen joined Chemical Resources Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1982 as Assistant Professor and was subsequently promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and Professor in 1996. Moving to the University of Tokyo as Professor in 2004, and Cross appointment with Shinshu University as Special Contract Professor in 2017. University Professor of the University of Tokyo in 2019.

Domen has been working on overall water splitting reaction on heterogeneous photocatalysts to generate clean and recyclable hydrogen. In 1980, he reported NiO-SrTiO3 photocatalyst for overall water splitting reaction, which was one of the earliest examples achieving stoichiometric H2 and O2 evolution on a particulate system. In 2005, he has succeeded in overall water splitting under visible light (400 nm<λ<500nm) on GaN:ZnO solid solution photocatalyst.