麻豆视频

Chemistry Professor Gordana Dukovic will pursue research to develop new insights into solar chemistry

麻豆视频 scientist Gordana Dukovic has been named a winner, a recognition that will support her research to develop new insights into solar chemistry.

Dukovic, a professor of chemistry and fellow in the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, is one of eight award recipients from universities across the United States who conduct basic research in chemistry or physics. Each winner will receive up to $2 million distributed over five years.

The Brown Investigator Award is given by the , which was founded "to support bold investigations with the potential for transformational discoveries that will ultimately benefit humanity,鈥� according to founder Ross M. Brown. It supports mid-career physics and chemistry researchers in the United States who are pursuing new directions of inquiry.

For Dukovic, that will mean broadening the work that she and the members of her interdisciplinary research group pursue in the field of nanoscience for solar energy harvesting.

鈥淚n this work, we often couple nanomaterials with biological catalysts, which are called enzymes,鈥� Dukovic explains. 鈥淣anomaterials can absorb sunlight and then give electrons generated by sunlight to the enzymes, which then do enzyme-catalyzed transformations that make new molecules.

鈥淲hat we鈥檙e finding in our work is that the outcomes of these solar processes are very sensitive to the details of how the nanomaterials interact with enzymes, which are difficult to determine. We know that there are elements of chemical structure that are going to be extremely important for the function of these materials we鈥檙e making, but they鈥檙e very difficult to see. This award will allow us to adapt and use the tools of electron microscopy in new ways to transform our understanding of the structure of the materials we work with.鈥�

鈥楾his hasn鈥檛 been done before鈥�

Because the Brown Investigator Award supports basic science, Dukovic emphasizes that her new area of research isn鈥檛 focused on making an existing device more efficient, but on learning how to control the outcomes of light-driven reactions.

鈥淲hen we try to use sunlight to make new molecules, like fuels or other useful chemicals, there are a lot of other places where the solar energy can go, (including) unproductive pathways where it can go,鈥� she says. 鈥淪o, we want to understand what controls whether a pathway is going to productive or unproductive and how to enhance the productive pathways.鈥�

Dukovic and her colleagues will explore the role of the structure of the materials that they鈥檙e making in determining these photochemical pathways and how they then we can make materials that have efficient photochemical pathways. Ultimately, she says, this may lead to new solar technologies.

鈥淎 lot of the chemical products that we use today, such as fuels or fertilizers or other common chemicals, they鈥檙e made in really energy-intensive, polluting ways,鈥� Dukovic says. 鈥淲e want to find ways to use sunlight to make the chemicals that our society uses more sustainable.鈥�

In her lab, Dukovic and her colleagues make semiconductor nanocrystals, which are tiny, light-emitting particles like quantum dots. They then study what happens after these materials absorb sunlight. Sometimes they couple nanocrystals with catalysts like enzymes or other molecules and then study the movement of electrons through the resulting chemical transformations.

Dukovic鈥檚 research relies on electron microscopy, but with a unique approach that combines two main types of it: , which is good for studying biomaterials like cells and proteins, and materials electron microscopy 鈥渓ooking at what each technique can learn from the other field,鈥� Dukovic explains. 鈥淗ow can we use these tools together to learn what we need to learn about the structure of materials?

鈥淲e鈥檙e using tools from the field that have not been used in this way before, so it鈥檚 more high-risk, and the (Brown Investigator Award) gives us more time and resources to figure it out, because this hasn鈥檛 been done before.鈥�

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