Organic-inorganic hybrid nanostructured materials for photovoltaics and solar fuels

The hydrogen economy aiming to use hydrogen as a new potential fuel for motive power has been proposed as a promising model for this century. However, until now most of the H2 in use still comes from steam reforming which produces H2 via steam reaction at high temperature with fossil fuel. Solar energy is the cleanest and most abundant renewable energy source available. The conversion of solar energy to electricity and fuel has seen gigantic progress in the last decades. It is a dream for many scientists to develop technologies that can convert the solar energy directly to chemical fuels, such as H2 and CH4, and these fuels can be easily converted to electricity by fuel cells.
Low dimensional materials have attracted considerable attention due to their unique optoelectronic properties. The use of low dimensional materials for solar energy to fuel conversion has been emerging very recently as a possible promising strategy. In this thesis, the possibility of solar energy to H2 fuel conversion via organic-inorganic hybrid nanostructured materials is investigated. The aim of this thesis is to unravel the properties of emerging low-dimensional materials, i.e. colloidal quantum dots and semiconducting carbon nanotubes as active components in sensitized solar cells and water splitting photoelectrodes. The exciton and free carrier dynamics in these hybrid systems in order to gain better understanding of the limiting factors of these materials and further improve the device performance are investigated.