FCF group (Institute of Catalysis and Petrochemistry, CSIC)

FCF (Fundamental Photocatalysis) group consists of 5 researchers at the Institute of Catalysis and Petrochemistry (ICP) of CSIC: Dr. Antonio López de Lacey, Principal researcher of the FCF group in FotoArt-CM, Dr. José Carlos Conesa Cegarra, Dr. María Verónica Ganduglia-Pirovano Carbonari, Dr. Ana Iglesias Juez and Dr. Marcos Pita Martínez. The five researchers have a total of 450 published articles, cited more than 20,000 times.

The group has extensive experience in photocatalysis, and in general on various types of catalysis involving electron transfer. It has worked with both TiO2-type photocatalysts, with various dopants and co-catalysts for H2 generation, as well as with other oxides such as ZnO and various sulphides. With these sulphides, the photogeneration of H2 or O2 catalysed by different redox metalloenzymes has also been studied. Likewise, the FCF group has experience in other oxides with redox capacity, such as CeO2 and zeolites, alone or supporting small aggregates of various metals.

The FCF group participates in 4 of the 6 scientific objectives of FotoArt-CM, being its main tasks: (i) Synthesis of p-type and n-type inorganic semiconducting materials absorbing visible light and with band structure suitable for photocatalytic water splitting; (ii) Synthesis of nanoparticles and their deposition on the semiconducting materials to study their properties as co-catalysts for H2 production, O2 evolution or CO2 reduction; iii) Characterisation of the structure-reactivity relationship of the synthesized materials by synchrotron radiation techniques (EXAFS and XANES), by different spectroscopies (IR, RPE) and by computational methods (DFT and hybrid functional); iv) Immobilization of redox metalloenzymes on the semiconductors as alternative co-catalysts; v) Development of photocathodes and photoanodes based on the studied semiconductors and co-catalysts.