LiSA is composed of five multi-institutional, multidisciplinary research teams working together, with crosscutting connections shaped by the co-design approach, to comprehensively address high-priority scientific opportunities in generation of liquid solar fuels.

Team 1: Systems and Integration 

The Systems and Integration team focuses on developing and understanding  integrated systems of microenvironments to produce liquid fuels using sunlight as the only source of energy. Working closely with other LiSA teams, we will develop multiphysics models to understand system-level phenomena for solar fuel generation. We will develop prototypes and testbeds that couple different microenvironments and develop techniques for operando characterization of dynamic evolution in components and assemblies as well as enabling investigation of system-level durability.

Team 2: Chemical Microenvironments

The Chemical Microenvironments team is focused on tailoring electrocatalytic selectivity and activity by tuning the balance of reactants, intermediates, and products in micro- and nano-scale geometries. The Chemical Microenvironments team will focus on tailoring the chemistry of the catalyst, the surface of the catalyst, and the bulk electrolyte. An effort focused on chemical tailoring of a heterogeneous catalytic center on the atomic scale beyond just the active site will enable selectivity for targeted reaction pathways. Additionally, the team will control the delivery and behavior of proton sources, such as water, to the active site in order to access the deep reducing potentials that are likely necessary to obtain highly reduced products from CO₂ and N₂. We will quantitatively understand and control the chemical microenvironments, providing component microenvironments that can be combined as an assembly. 

Team 3: Photodynamics

The Photodynamics team is focused on understanding photon, electron, and molecular processes, from excitation at light absorbers to the catalytic center, in order to control the dynamic energy landscape of multiple-electron multiple-proton chemical transformation.  The team will work on establishing a scientific foundation to bridge time and length scales from photo-generation of carriers and photo-modulation of molecular function to catalysis, using various temporally and spatially resolved experimental techniques in combination with multi-scale theoretical approaches.  We will also explore novel use of light beyond its primary role of charge separation.

Team 4: Durability

The performance demands for generation of liquid solar fuels are significant, necessitating efficient and stable operation of microenvironment assemblies up to 100,000 hours under real world conditions. Although there has been substantial research on artificial photosynthesis over the last several decades, a major bottleneck to designing long-lasting systems for liquid solar fuels is the durability of components. The Durability Team is addressing this challenge by utilizing a combination of advanced characterization techniques and first-principles theoretical methods to develop new theories and scaling laws for the fundamental electron transfer, ion transfer, and diffusion processes that initiate the degradation of catalysts and photocatalysts. They are also exploring how statistical rare events such as stochastic fluctuations in local pH cascade into failure modes. The Durability Team is working together with all the LiSA Teams to discover predictive relationships that enable co-design for durability and performance, tying into the Hub-wide research strategy of using data science to bridge microscopic processes to complex systems science. 

Team 5: Photoactive Materials

The Photoactive Materials team puts the "solar" in "solar liquid fuels" through the study of materials that utilize to drive the electrochemical reactions and chemical environment management, in conjunction with the other LiSA Teams. The Team features high-throughput experiment and theory to facilitate the co-design of photocatalyst performance and durability, where data science is often invoked to integrate theory and experiment for discovering durability and performance descriptors. Directed efforts include photo-mediated control of the energy landscape in space and time. Through fundamental understanding of the underlying materials chemistry, the Team generates novel photoactive materials, heterostructures, and device architectures for solar fuels science. 

 Artwork: Darius Siwek