ITQ Severo Ochoa Lecture «Carbon Nitride Thin Films for Energy Conversion and Beyond» – Dr. Paolo Giusto

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ITQ Severo Ochoa Lecture

El próximo lunes 21 de julio de 2025 contaremos con el Dr. Paolo Giusto – Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces – quien impartirá la charla “Carbon Nitride Thin Films for Energy Conversion and Beyond”.

  • Lunes 21 de julio de 2025 (11h)
  • Salón de Actos del ITQ (UPV-CSIC)

Carbon Nitride Thin Films for Energy Conversion and Beyond

The interest in metal-free materials has been recently rising, and structures with target properties and chemical features have significantly widened the application spectrum of this class of materials. Among those, carbon nitride materials, a class of 2D polymeric semiconductor with ideal formula C3N4, have recently attracted much attention especially in photocatalysis. However, up to now, their application in several fields was hindered due to the low homogeneity of the coatings available. Recently, we developed an innovative method to produce carbon nitride thin films with tunable thickness by means of chemical vapor deposition. The as prepared thin films are highly stable, homogeneous, and flat with a very high refractive index, even in the range of diamond. The high homogeneity and conformal deposition of the carbon nitride thin films prepared enabled to use them to develop innovative batch and microfluidic photoreactors, by coating the reactors’ walls, achieving high selectivity and conversion in shorter time. Furthermore, the utilization of carbon nitride thin films further enabled the development of in-operando spectroscopic techniques providing fundamental mechanistic insights and the critical role of surface interactions in key reactions, such as water splitting. Eventually, the use of thin films in energy conversion is still in its infancy, however, it sets the premises for significant improvements in photo-, photoelectro-catalysis, and beyond

Biosketch

Paolo Giusto pursued his Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Colloid Chemistry department, in Potsdam, under the supervision of Prof. Antonietti. After graduating in 2020 and a brief postdoc, he was promoted as Group Leader at the same institute (2021), where he currently leads an international research team of 10+ members. In his position, he is involved in several funded research projects at national, European, and international levels. During this period he also completed an extra-occupational MBA at ESMT Berlin (with Honors). Furthermore, he has been recently invited as a Visiting Fellow to join the department of Chemical Engineering at UNSW Sydney, in the group of Prof. Liming Dai, and he currently holds an Assistant Professor position (visiting) at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane (AU). Paolo Giusto’s research focuses on the synthesis of covalent materials and thin films with specific chemical, electronic, and structural properties for applications in energy storage and conversion.