Congratulations to Seryio for his paper in J. Phys. Chem. Lett.!
© 2019 EPFL
Can we use perovskite nanocrystals as light absorbers to drive chemical reactions?
Possibly yes!
In the just published “Exploring energy transfer in a metal/perovskite nanocrystal antenna to drive photocatalysis”, we use our previously developed ALD protection scheme to assemble an artificial antenna where CsPbBr3 nanocrystals (PeNCs) are used as light-harvesting energy transfer donors, while Ag NCs are employed as acceptors and catalysts. By varying the thickness of an alumina layer in between, we reveal that energy is funneled from the PeNCs to the Ag catalytic center. Going one step further, we demonstrate that such energy can drive chemical reactions with an efficiency which overcomes that of the single components.
In most artificial photosystems reported in the literature, charge transfer rather than energy transfer is exploited. Our work introduces a novel platform to investigate energy transfer phenomena among different donors and acceptors, thus bringing closer the natural and artificial photosynthetic systems. Furthrmore it enables to investigate PeNCs for this purpose, something which has not been explored so far by other researchers.