Professor James Durrant - Department of Chemistry and Centre for Processable Electronics, Imperial College London.

Solar energy is a global success story. The installed capacity of silicon photovoltaic cells doubles every three years, and already currently provides circa 6% of global electric power. However currently solar energy devices come essentially in a ‘one size fits all’ configuration – black silicon wafers sandwiched between glass plates producing electrical power when the sun shines. In order to enable the continued expansion of solar energy globally, new technologies are likely to play an increasing role. Plastic encapsulated photovoltaic foils light enough to be deployed on warehouse roofing. Semi-transparent solar cells under which plants can grow. Photocatalytic devices which produce not electrical current but molecular fuels (e.g. green hydrogen, green methanol, i.e.: ‘liquid sunshine’) which can be stored for use in winter, transported around the world, or used as sustainable feedstocks for our chemical industry.

In Professor Durrant’s talk, he introduced some of these next generation solar conversion technologies, highlighting their potential, challenges for their development and some of the research ongoing at Imperial and globally to address these challenges.

In addition to his core research activities, Professor Durrant leads Imperial’s Centre for Plastic Electronics, and the Welsh government funded Sêr Cymru Solar initiative. He also founded the UK’s Solar Fuels Network and was founding Deputy Director of Imperial’s Energy Futures Laboratory.