Professor Joseph (Joe) DuChene

Alumni - Academic Faculty

Plasmonics, Solar Fuels



Joe DuChene was a postdoctoral scholar in the Atwater group from 2016 to 2019. Working with the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at Caltech, he conducted fundamental studies on the energy distributions and ultrafast dynamics of plasmonic hot carriers in metal nanostructures and pioneered new plasmonic devices for enhancing the selectivity of photoelectrochemical CO2 reduction. He was also involved in the development of two-dimensional semiconductors for electrocatalysis and the design of nanoporous metal films for electrochemical CO2 reduction. Joe obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry in 2015 at the University of Florida with Professor David Wei, where his dissertation involved the development of plasmonic photoelectrochemical cells for solar-to-fuel energy conversion. He is currently Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, where his group designs and creates nanostructured catalysts capable of sustainably synthesizing fuels and chemicals from CO2, sunlight, and water.

Available Publications


Probing the Catalytically Active Region in a Nanoporous Gold Gas Diffusion Electrode for Highly Selective Carbon Dioxide Reduction

Aidan Q. Fenwick, Alex J. Welch, Xueqian Li, Ian Sullivan, Joseph S. DuChene, Chengxiang Xiang, Harry A. Atwater
ACS Energy Letters, 2022, 7, 871−879 (2022)

Unassisted Highly Selective Gas-Phase CO2 Reduction with a Plasmonic Au/p-GaN Photocatalyst Using H2O as an Electron Donor

Rengui Li, Wen-Hui Cheng, Matthias H. Richter, Joseph S. DuChene, Wenming Tian, Can Li, and Harry A. Atwater
ACS Energy Lett. 2021, 6, 1849−1856 (2021)

Band Edge Tailoring in Few-Layer Two-Dimensional Molybdenum Sulfide/Selenide Alloys

Yi-Rung Lin, Wen-Hui Cheng, Matthias H. Richter, Joseph S. DuChene, Elizabeth A. Peterson, Cora M. Went, Zakaria Y. Al Balushi, Deep Jariwala, Jeffrey B. Neaton, Li-Chyong Chen, and Harry A. Atwater
The Journal of Physical Chemistry (2020) - 2D Materials

Ultrafast hot-hole injection modifies hot-electron dynamics in Au/p-GaN heterostructures

Giulia Tagliabue, Joseph S. DuChene, Mohamed Abdellah, Adela Habib, David J. Gosztola, Yocefu Hattori, Wen-Hui Cheng, Kaibo Zheng, Sophie E. Canton, Ravishankar Sundararaman, Jacinto Sá, and Harry A. Atwater
Nature Materials (2020) - Nanophotonic Materials and Devices Nanophotonics Photocatalysis

Hot-Hole versus Hot-Electron Transport at Cu/ GaN Heterojunction Interfaces

Giulia Tagliabue, Joseph S. DuChene, Adela Habib, Ravishankar Sundararaman, and Harry A. Atwater
ACS Nano (2020) - Plasmonics