All About Seunghoon Lee

Hoon has completed his Ph.D. in Physics at Pukyong National University in 2019 in South Korea. His primary goal was to develop a renewable energy through sunlight to replace fossil fuels. To achieve this goal, he has worked on a fundamental understanding about solar-to-electrical/chemical energy conversion in terms of charge transfer in metal nanoparticle-attached semiconductor nanowire system. He mainly focused on measuring surface potential to study charge-transfer using atomic force microscopy under light illumination and used two computational simulation tools (COMSOL for electrical properties and Lumerical for optical properties calculations). He has found that metal nanoparticle can absorb sunlight and transfer energetic electrons to semiconductor by boosting optoelectrical properties of the semiconductor device, which is the main mechanism of solar-to-electricity conversion and the major research accomplishment. Beside with this mechanism study, he has studied thermo-electric, magneto-optical interaction, and mechano-chemical effects using various characterization tools.

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After his Ph.D., Hoon wanted to expand and apply his knowledge to more practical applications beyond mechanism, so he began to focus on electrochemical CO2 recycling since CO2 is the primary cause of global warming. Hoon’s research was initially funded by Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), and he has worked at Duke University for about 2.5 years. The main work was to develop and optimize a prototype reactor to produce more hydrocarbon products. Hoon has found that product selectivity shifts toward C1 or C2 products depending on local conditions around a catalyst. Untill now, he is the first author of 14 publications (ex: Nano Energy, Nano Letters, JACS, ACS Nano, CM, JMCA… etc) with a total of 24 publications, has two patents, has won three awards, and has had more than 10 presentations in the international conferences.

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The electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction is a promising technology that can produce chemicals and liquid fuels, which can replace fossil fuels. However, an overall system including catalyst is unstable, and this instability is one of the biggest obstacles for commercializing this technology. Hoon’s current interest as a short-term goal is to improve the stability of a catalyst so that we can produce final products consistently. As his long-term goal, Hoon would like to develop a “solar-driven CO2 recycling technology”.