Solar hydrogen production: Splitting water with UV is now at almost 100% quantum efficiency
Date:
June 3, 2020
Source:
Shinshu University
Summary:
Scientists have successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen
using light and meticulously designed catalysts, and they did so
at the maximum efficiency meaning there was almost no loss and
undesired side reactions.
This latest breakthrough in solar hydrogen production makes the
likelihood of scalable, economically viable hydrogen production
more than likely, paving the way for humanity to make the switch
to clean energy.
FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Pour yourself a glass of water and take a look at it. This water contains
an abundant source of fuel, hydrogen. Hydrogen burns clean unlike
petrol-based energy products. Sound too good to be true? Scientists in
Japan successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen using light and meticulously designed catalysts, and they did so at the maximum efficiency meaning there was almost no loss and undesired side reactions. This
latest breakthrough in solar hydrogen production makes the likelihood
of scalable, economically viable hydrogen production more than likely,
paving the way for humanity to make the switch to clean energy.
========================================================================== Water splitting using catalysts and sunlight, called photocatalysis
has been a promising method of achieving solar hydrogen production
for decades. However, most previous attempts only yielded an external
quantum efficiency of less than about 50% representing the difficulty
in efficient catalyst design for real world use. The catalyst needed
to be designed better so every absorbed photon from the light source
is used to make hydrogen. The key to improving efficiency was strategic placement of the co-catalysts and preventing defects in the semiconductor.
Published in the May 27th issue of Nature, Tsuyoshi Takata of Shinshu University et al. broke through new frontiers in power production
by using aluminum-doped strontium titanate as a photocatalyst,
whose properties have been extensively studied and therefore the best understood. They choose co- catalysts rhodium for hydrogen with chromium
oxide, and cobalt-oxide for oxygen, by fine-tuning them to engage in
only desired reactions. This method made possible for the reaction to
have no recombination losses.
These new findings open the doors to achieve scalable and economically
viable solar hydrogen production. Their design strategies succeeded in
reducing defects that lead to near perfect efficiency, and knowledge
obtained will be applied to other materials with intense visible light absorption. More work is still needed before we can run our cars on
hydrogen, because this study focused on the use of ultraviolet light
and abundant visible light from the sun remained unused. However, this
great breakthrough has made that possibility no longer too good to be
true, but in theory, just a matter of time. Hopefully it will encourage scientists, researchers and engineers to engage in this field, bringing
the use of solar hydrogen power that much closer.
========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Shinshu_University. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.
========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Tsuyoshi Takata, Junzhe Jiang, Yoshihisa Sakata, Mamiko Nakabayashi,
Naoya Shibata, Vikas Nandal, Kazuhiko Seki, Takashi Hisatomi,
Kazunari Domen. Photocatalytic water splitting with a quantum
efficiency of almost unity. Nature, 2020; 581 (7809): 411 DOI:
10.1038/s41586-020-2278-9 ==========================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200603104547.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200603104547.htm
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