Artificial Photosynthesis | Materials Chemistry | Bioanalytical Chemistry

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Our approach to the utilization of solar energy is to build a modular thin-film photoconversion model system using various solid-supported lipid structures. This effort is apparently inspired by Nature's tremendous success in building photosynthesis systems using these materials. With our biomimetic approach, fundamental parameters governing the photoconverting performance can be systematically studied and optimized. Efforts have been made more recently in this lab to understand the various roles lipids can potentially play in order to improve the photoconversion efficiency further. Our current research in materials chemistry focuses on phospholipid-based self assembly as well as physiochemical characterization of such assembled systems. By various the size, structure as well as other properties of these lipids, we’ve found it’s possible to build molecular assemblies with distinctive functionalities. Finally, one of our long-term research goals is to develop integrated chemical systems for sensitive biorecognition and detection. While it seems increasingly easy to achieve high-sensitivity detection nowadays, it remains difficult to do it inexpensively and reliably. Importantly, electrochemistry-based detection schemes also bear a great potential in simultaneous detection of multiple analytes. In this case, our experience in microfabrication and micropatterning comes in handy. Our current effort along this direction has been the development of a new, low-cost detection strategy for nanoparticles. If successful, this method can serve as a general analytical tool for characterizing the size of nanoparticles as well as interactions between nanoparticles.

Xie, H.; Jiang, K.; Zhan, W. “Modular Molecular Photovoltaic System Based on Phospholipid/Alkanethiol Hybrid Bilayers: Photocurrent Generation and Modulation.” Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2011, 13, 17712–17721.

Song, N.; Zhu H.; Jin, S.; Zhan, W.; Lian, T. “Poisson-Distributed Electron-Transfer Dynamics from Single Quantum Dots to C60 Molecules.” ACS Nano, 2011, 5, 613-621.

Zhan, W.; Jiang, K.; Smith, K. D.; Auad, M. L.; Ruppel, J. V.; Kim, C.; Zhang, X. P.; Best, M. D. “Photocurrent Generation from Porphyrin/Fullerene Complexes Assembled in a Tethered Lipid Bilayer.” Langmuir 2010, 26, 15671-15679.

Jiang, K.; Xie, H.; Zhan, W., “Photocurrent Generation from Ru(bpy)₃²⁺ Immobilized on Phospholipid/Alkanethiol Hybrid Bilayers.” Langmuir 2009, 25, 11129-11136.

Zhan, W.; Jiang, K. “A Modular Photocurrent Generation System Based on Phospholipid-Assembled Fullerenes.”Langmuir 2008, 24, 13258-13261.