Scope

Artificial photosynthesis has the potential to be one of the most promising sciences and technologies to make effective use of natural energy. Many companies and citizens as well as universities and institutes also have great interest in further development of this technology and science. The artificial photosynthesis attracts much attention as one of the promising technologies for solving the global environmental problems that may threaten sustainability of human beings caused by the exhaustion of fossil energy and carbon resources along with the gradual increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. The research on the artificial photosynthesis had restarted and been renovated in late 20th century through the three milestones of the light induced water splitting using titanium dioxide (Honda-Fujishima effect: 1972), water oxidation catalyst (Meyer: 1983), and photocatalytic reduction of CO₂　(Lehn: 1986). The world’s most advanced researches have been conducted at many universities and institutes in Japan, and Japan have led the world in these research areas. On the other hand, many national projects such as JCAP in U.S.A. (ten years project started in 2011 with the research fund of several billions yen every year) has been conducted in many countries in Europe, China and Korea in these years. Also in Japan, strong financial support from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology have started for the national project, "All Nippon Artificial photosynthesis Project for Living Earth (AnApple)" (research representative: H. Inoue) as one of the Scientific Researches on Innovative Areas from the fiscal year 2012 as five years' project. More than 40 Japanese leading scientific groups in this area joined this project, and are working very hard with strong collaboration with each other to get the world's leading results. In November 2014, ICARP 2014 (http://www.artificial-photosynthesis.net/icarp2014) was successfully held at Awaji Yumebutai International Conference Center in Hyogo Prefecture. The top scientists from all over the world in the artificial-photosynthesis research area got together and achieved fruitful and meaningful results.

It is our great pleasure to announce that the AnApple project will host "The International Conference on Artificial Photosynthesis. The ICARP2017 will be held for four days from March 2 (Thursday, afternoon) to 5 (Sunday) in 2017 at Suzaku Campus of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto City (http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/eng/html/about/abo_08.html/) in collaboration with "Faraday Discussions" that will be held by Royal Society of Chemistry from February 28 to March 2, 2017 at the same venue in Kyoto. Stimulating reports on latest research results and discussions on the present situation and the future prospect of the artificial photosynthesis will be intensively presented, and be disseminated to the world. The top scientists from all over the world in the artificial-photosynthesis research area will get together. We believe that ICARP2017 will surely provide a significant opportunity to contribute to the development of the future of this research field.