Research Group of Photoelectrochemistry of Semiconductors
Team leader: prof. dr hab. Magdalena Skompska
Team leader’s e-mail address: mskomps@chem.uw.edu.pl
Brief description of the research topic:
The research interest of the team is the synthesis and investigation of hybrid materials and systems, and their applications in electrocatalysis and photo(electro)catalysis. The first group of materials includes organic-inorganic hybrids in which bimetallic Au@Pt nanoparticles are uniformly dispersed in the conducting polymer films deposited on the electrodes. These systems show exceptionally high activity in electrocatalytic oxidation of formic acid – the fuel used in low-temperature fuel cells. In turn, the polymer/ Au(nanoparticles) system has proven to be an efficient catalyst for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol. Our team is also interested in the development of non-metallic catalysts, for example, based on two-dimensional semiconductors, such as MoS2, for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER).
The second direction of our research is synthesis of nanostructured semiconductors and their application in photo(electro)catalytic water splitting, and degradation of organic pollutants (dyes and pharmaceuticals). We elaborate the hybrid systems based on inorganic (BiVO4, MoO3, Bi2WO6) and organic (g-C3N4) semiconductors, photoactive in visible light. These systems, additionally containing Au nanoparticles or fullerenes to separate the photo-generated electron-hole pairs, show an excellent activity due to Z-scheme mechanism of photocatalytic process. The composite BiVO4/Au/g-C3N4 has shown very good efficiency in photocatalytic degradation of duloxetine (an active compound of antidepressants) and other pharmaceuticals, which are present in wastewater and rivers, having a harmful effect on aquatic ecosystems. Thus, the photocatalysts elaborated by us can be used in technologies dedicated to environmental protection.
Another research direction focuses on the optimization of deposition processes aimed at obtaining semiconductor materials through cost-effective methods. This includes subsequent functionalization with conducting polymers, or systems incorporating polyelectrolytes in multilayer architectures or mixed thin films.
A distinct line of research is pursued by dr. hab. Paweł Oracz, whose work focuses on the application of computational methods to determine the thermodynamic properties of halogenated hydrocarbons in accordance with the IUPAC-NIST standards.
In the studies, we employ numerous physicochemical techniques:
electrochemical methods (potentiodynamic, potentiostatic, impedance, electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance), spectroscopic (UV-Vis, Raman, FTIR, PL), XPS, SIMS, and microscopic (SEM, TEM, HR-TEM).
In the field of semiconductors, we have a collaboration with the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, while the studies of degradation of pharmaceuticals are performed in collaboration with the Faculty of Pharmacy, Warsaw Medical University.