New insights for sun-gathering technologies

Date:
August 24, 2020
Source:
Arizona State University
Summary:
Researchers are taking a page from Nature's lesson book. Inspired
by the way plants and other photosynthetic organisms collect and
use the sun's radiant energy, they hope to develop technologies
that harvest sunlight and store it as carbon-free or carbon-neutral
fuels.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Every hour, the sun saturates the earth with more energy than humans
use in a year. Harnessing some of this energy to meet global demand has
become a grand challenge, with the world poised to double its energy consumption in just thirty years.


==========================================================================
In a new study, researchers at the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery (CASD) and ASU's School of Molecular Sciences take a page from Nature's lesson book. Inspired by the way plants and other photosynthetic organisms collect and use the sun's radiant energy, they hope to develop technologies that harvest sunlight and store it as carbon-free or carbon- neutral fuels.

"This article describes a general yet useful strategy for better
understanding the role of catalysts in emerging technologies for
converting sunlight to fuels," says corresponding author Gary Moore.

The research appears in the current issue of the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal Applied Energy Materials.

Despite the advances in solar panel technologies, their limitations are apparent. Researchers would like to store accumulated energy from the sun
in a concentrated form, to be used when and where it is needed. Catalysts
- - materials that act to speed up the rate at which chemical reactions
occur - - are a critical ingredient for harvesting sunlight and
stockpiling it as fuels, through a process known as photoelectrosynthesis.

As the authors demonstrate, however, the effectiveness of catalysts is critically dependent on how they are used in new green technologies. The
goal is to maximize energy efficiency and where possible, make use of earth-abundant elements.

According to Brian Wadsworth, researcher in the CASD center and lead
author of the new study, a less-is-more approach to catalysts may
improve the performance of photoelectrosynthetic devices: "There is
a traditional notion that relatively high loadings of catalyst are
beneficial to maximizing the reaction rates and related performance of catalytic materials," Wadsworth says. "However, this design strategy
should not always be implemented in assemblies involving the capture
and conversion of solar energy as relatively thick catalyst layers can
hamper performance by screening sunlight from reaching an underlying light-absorbing material and/or disfavoring the accumulation of catalytically-active states." The new research provides a framework
for better understanding catalytic performance in solar fuel devices
and points the way to further discoveries.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Arizona_State_University. Original
written by Richard Harth. Note: Content may be edited for style and
length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Brian L. Wadsworth, Nghi P. Nguyen, Daiki Nishiori, Anna M. Beiler,
Gary
F. Moore. Addressing the Origin of Photocurrents and Fuel
Production Activities in Catalyst-Modified Semiconductor
Electrodes. ACS Applied Energy Materials, 2020; 3 (8): 7512 DOI:
10.1021/acsaem.0c00919 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200824144403.htm

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