Visions - Winter 2020 - 4

NEW ENDEAVORS SUPPORT SUSTAINABILITY

Syzygy Plasmonics Makes the Fight
Against Climate Change More Affordable

roviding an investment to scale a new photocatalytic
reactor and build a pilot plant for hydrogen production,
Sumitomo Corporation of Americas participated in
Series A funding for Syzygy Plasmonics Inc., a new tech company
in Houston, Texas.
Syzygy aims to revolutionize
the industrial gas, chemical, and
energy industries by drastically
reducing the cost and carbon
emissions in the production process for a wide range of major
chemicals such as fuel, fertilizer, and plastic. Syzygy's first go-to
market is focused on hydrogen production for transportation.
Syzygy is advancing a new photocatalytic chemical reactor
powered by light, as opposed to heat from burning fuel,
leveraging an innovative photocatalytic platform technology
based on two decades of research from Rice University professors Naomi Halas and Peter Nordlander. In reducing carbon
emissions among common energy producers, this marks a
significant step for Sumitomo, as Syzygy has the opportunity
to disrupt the current energy landscape.
"We are excited to support the groundbreaking technology
Syzygy is bringing to this space," said Kazuki Yamaguchi, Senior
Vice President, GM Energy Group, Sumitomo Corporation of
Americas. "We believe hydrogen is and will continue to play
an important role in the future energy market and we aim to
facilitate on-site hydrogen production to deliver much more affordable hydrogen. Globally, Sumitomo Corporation is engaged
in hydrogen business and it intends to continue investing in
innovations like Syzygy's."
Hydrogen Generation Market size is forecast to cross USD 180
billion by 2024, according to a new research report by Global
Market Insights, Inc.
"This support coming from Sumitomo is pivotal for Syzygy,"
Said Trevor Best, CEO and Co-Founder of Syzygy. "Not only
does it provide additional resources for our development, but
it also helps Syzygy in that Sumitomo is a strong commercial
partner who can help us to deploy these systems. Perhaps most
importantly, it shows Sumitomo's support for early stage technologies with the long term potential to help fight climate change."
The technologies for creating plasmonics all rely on controlling
the interaction between an electromagnetic field and the free
electrons in a metal that account for the metal's conductivity
and optical properties. Recently plasmonic science applied to
the field of photocatalysis has enabled breakthroughs like the
one being commercialized by Syzygy Plasmonics.
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visions

Winter 2020

From left, Syzygy's dream team! Trevor Best, CEO, Co-founder;
Prof. Naomi Halas, Inventor, Co-founder; Prof. Peter Nordlander, Inventor,
Co-founder,; Suman Khatiwada, PhD, CTO, Co-founder.

SCOA has continued to diversify its energy portfolio outside
of its typical oil and gas investments, particularly in renewable
energy and this new addition proves to support the company's
entrance into non-hydrocarbon space as it aims to promote
more environmentally sustainable energy.

Now You See Me, Now You Don't?
Unrelated to Syzygy's projects, plasmonics' most
"magical" possibility is in creating an "invisibility
cloak." In 1897 - long before Harry Potter's version
of the device - H. G.Wells published The Invisible Man,
where a young scientist discovers how to make his own
body's refractive index equal to that of air, rendering him
invisible. (A material's refractive index is the ratio of the
speed of light in a vacuum to the speed of light in the material.)
Exciting a plasmonic structure with radiation that is close to the
structure's resonant frequency can make its refractive index equal
to air, so it would neither bend nor reflect light. Laminated with a
material that produces optical gain, the structures increase in intensity would offset the absorption losses. Making it invisible, at least to
radiation in a selected range of frequencies.
A true invisibility cloak, however, must be able to hide anything within the structure and work for all visible light frequencies. Physicists
say this may actually be possible, through plasmonics. In a 2006
study, scientists at the Imperial College London showed that a shell
of metamaterials could, in theory, re-route the electromagnetic
waves traveling through it, diverting them around a spherical region
within and essentially rendering an object invisible.

Visions - Winter 2020

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