At Boston College, we are committed to understanding the science that governs the synthesis of nanostructures and how the resulting materials’ morphology and crystal structure influence their physical, particularly the electrical, properties. Through these studies, we hope to develop methodologies that will enable us to create nanostructures by design. These materials will act as active components in devices operating at near the theoretical limit efficiencies in harvesting solar energy.

Ongoing projects in our lab can be categorized by the nanostructure morphologies we seek to make — aligned nanowires and webbed nanowires. The aligned arrangement permits maximum photon-absorption and charge separation, ideal for photovoltaics. Webbed nanowires, on the other hand, make it possible to achieve superior charge transport without losing the high surface-to-volume ratios, ideal for photosynthesis to produce solar fuels.

Representative Key Publications:

Guangbi Yuan, Ken Aruda, Sa Zhou, Andrew Levine, Jin Xie, Dunwei Wang, “Understanding Origin of Low Performance of Chemically Grown Si Nanowires for Solar Energy Conversion”, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2011, 50, 2344

Yongjing Lin, Sa Zhou, Xiaohua Liu, Staff Sheehan, Dunwei Wang, “TiO₂/TiSi₂ Heterostructures for High-Efficiency Photoelectrochemical H₂O Splitting”, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2009, 131, 2772

Sa Zhou, Xiaohua Liu, Yongjing Lin, Dunwei Wang, “Spontaneous Growth of Highly Conductive Two-dimensional Single Crystalline TiSi₂ Nanonets”, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2008, 47, 7681