- Awards and Distinctions
Granted by the Government of Canada, this prestigious award supports innovative research on solar energy storage.
A Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship has been awarded to Cristina Rodriguez Seco, a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Dongling Ma’s team at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS).
The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Program provides funding to the best postdoctoral candidates, nationally and internationally, to contribute to the economic, social, and scientific development of Canada. For Ms. Rodriguez Seco, this is an opportunity to continue her research on high efficiency photobatteries.
“As a Banting fellow, being positioned in a cutting-edge field like integrated photobatteries is a wonderful thing, she says. The visibility this grant provides will be an important driver of innovation, stimulating collaboration between key research groups and institutions. Ultimately, it’s these relationships that will result in novel breakthroughs that the growing field needs.”
Improved Materials
The work of the postdoctoral fellow at the Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre aims to develop new types of doped carbon nitride (C3N4) quantum dots which will allow efficient visible-driven photocatalysis. The photobattery will be designed to act simultaneously as a solar energy converter and storage device. For example, it could be charged by solar energy during the day and used at night at campsites.
The carbon nitridewas selected because of its various advantages such as earth-abundance, high stability, cost effectiveness, visible photocatalytic activity and high potential for scale-up. Nonetheless, its visible activity still needs to be largely improved. That is why the project proposes to work with highly promising, doped-C3N4 quantum dots.
“The field of integrated two-electrode photobatteries is still in its infancy,” says Dongling Ma. “The use of C3N4 quantum dots in integrated photobattery devices is an unexplored frontier that is on the cusp of becoming a burgeoning field with promising solutions to the energy storage challenge.”
“I’m eager to be involved with this project and also grateful for the generous support of the Banting award. It will help my work get recognized on a larger scale and grow my professional network.”
Cristina Rodriguez Seco, postdoctoral fellow
