POWERING THE PLANET: A Chemical Bonding Center for the Direct Conversion of Sunlight into Chemical Fuel

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With this Chemical Bonding Center (CBC) Phase I, Step II award, the Division of Chemistry and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate jointly support the research of Harry B. Gray, of the California Institute of Technology, who will lead a collaborative effort involving researchers from Caltech and MIT. This CBC will address one of the most important scientific challenges of the 21st century - the efficient, and ultimately economical, storage of solar energy in the form of chemical bonds. The focus of this research will be on the use of sunlight to split water into its higher energy building blocks: hydrogen and oxygen. This CBC seeks to provide the basic science needed to permit future generations to use sunlight as a renewable and environmentally benign energy source. The research will have a broad impact on society in the science that it produces, and also on the students, professionals and public that it educates. National and international energy policies depend on the outcome of these studies. Raising public awareness of the importance of the renewable energy problem and the nature of the scientific challenges required to address it will be a priority of this CBC.Chemical Bonding Centers are designed to focus innovative collaborative efforts that address a "big problem" which will lead to a major advance in chemistry or at the interface of chemistry and other sciences and will have the potential to attract broad scientific and public interest.