About the Project
Funding is available for a PhD studentship to start in October 2020. The project will be based in the group of Dr Salvador Eslava in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. Collaboration will be kept with colleagues at Imperial College London. The candidate will also be part of the UK Solar Fuels Network and the CO2Chem Network, funded by EPSRC, which will provide further opportunities for attending international conferences and disseminating your research.
Project description:
The development of artificial leaves is crucial to exploit the solar energy and meet the increasing population energy demand, which is rising 10% per year. In line with this, this PhD project aims to develop efficient artificial leaves to make chemical fuels from sunlight. They will cover photocatalysis with powder nanomaterials or photoelectrochemistry with engineered photoelectrodes. The PhD objective will be to use sunlight to split H2O into hydrogen (and oxygen) and/or photoreduce CO2 with H2O to carbon-based fuels such as methane and carbon monoxide. The student will work with a multidisciplinary team embracing a wide range of expertise in chemistry, materials science, and chemical engineering. They will develop novel wet-chemistry methods or vapour deposition techniques for the preparation of photocatalysts and/or photoelectrodes, in order to improve their properties and performance, and exploit the use of novel nanomaterials such as graphene oxide, halide perovskites, oxo/alkoxy clusters, and others. Extended physico-chemical characterisation with XRD, UV-Vis, EXAFS, SEM, TEM, XPS and photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical tests will be carried out to relate the performance of the nanomaterials to their properties.
The PhD project will achieve important advances in artificial photosynthesis, exploiting the solar energy and providing clean solar fuels to be readily used as feedstocks in our existing technologies (the industry of fertilisers, plastics, pharmaceuticals or synthetic fuels for transport). In parallel, they will advance in the utilisation of CO2, offering strategies to decrease the high levels of atmospheric CO2 causing global warming.
Applicants should be able to demonstrate excellent written and oral communication skills, and an outstanding academic and research record in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, or any other related discipline.
Applications should be made through the College’s online application system, specifying Dr Eslava as a supervisor:
http://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg/apply/how-to-apply/
Important information about the College’s PhD application process can be found on the following page: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg
Further information on the PhD scholarship can be found here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/chemical-engineering/courses/postgraduate/phd/scholarships/
Pertinent inquiries about the post can be made to Dr Salvador Eslava ([Email Address Removed]). Applications without transcript details will be ignored.
Funding Notes
The scholarship is open to all applicants regardless of their fee status, and cover both tuition fees and an annual tax-free contribution to maintenance costs of £17,009. Outstanding applications will be shortlisted for the President's scholarship.
These scholarships are very competitive, so you should hold a First Class degree from the UK or an equivalent degree from somewhere else. Here more information on entry requirements: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg/apply/requirements/pgacademic/
Supporting documentation will be required, typically CV, research proposal or personal statement, transcript and IELTS results. Please note, your application will not be reviewed by the College unless all required documents have been provided.
References
2 references will be needed, at least one of whom must be an academic referee (for example your project supervisor or personal tutor). You will be asked to give the e-mail addresses of the referees, which will trigger reference requests directly to the referees.
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