Mihai Vaida
University of Central Florida, FL·Chemistry·Early-career
Green plants turn sunlight into chemical fuel. Doing the same thing artificially could meet growing energy demand.
- Fields
Chemistry
Physics
Materials Science
- Topics
photocatalysis
solar fuels
water splitting
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Track how light-excited charge carriers move at the surface of metal-decorated 2D transition metal dichalcogenide photocatalysts, using pump-probe photoemission spectroscopy with extreme ultraviolet laser pulses at femtosecond resolution.
- Identify the short-lived intermediates and final products of light-driven water splitting on these 2D catalysts, using pump-probe femtosecond-laser mass spectrometry with soft XUV ionization.
- Decipher reaction pathways that convert CO2 into fuel molecules on metal-decorated 2D materials, resolving the species involved by time, mass and energy.
More about the research
Using visible light to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, or to turn carbon dioxide (CO2) into fuels, are important goals. Still, no method yet produces solar fuels at large scale. A key obstacle is that the light-driven steps on a catalyst's surface happen in femtoseconds, millionths of a billionth of a second, which is too fast for most tools to see.
Why it matters
Making fuels from sunlight, water and CO2 could provide clean energy, but current photocatalysts are not efficient enough for large-scale use. By watching how charges move and how molecules react on 2D catalysts at femtosecond speeds, this work could guide the design of better photocatalysts for hydrogen production and CO2-to-fuel conversion.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Wennie Wang
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Materials Science·Early-career
Use first-principles calculations to determine how complex defects in transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers set the energy needed for resistive switching, revealing trends across materials.
Psaras McGrier
Ohio State University, OH·Chemistry
Synthesize metal-free donor-acceptor covalent organic frameworks, crystalline porous polymers pairing electron-rich and electron-poor units, and test whether visible light drives them to reduce carbon dioxide.
Saien Xie
Princeton University, NJ·Materials Science·Early-career
Determine how thermodynamic and kinetic factors govern the formation of epitaxial interfaces, crystal-aligned boundaries, between two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides with controlled composition and structure at nanometer length scales.
The school
University of Central Florida: 15 labs on PI Pages, $285M a year on research, 290 research doctorates a year.
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