Photoelectrochemical water-splitting efficiency hits 4.5%

20-Jan-2020 - Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting for hydrogen fuel generation has been considered the Holy Grail of electrochemistry. But to achieve it, many scientists believe the materials have to be abundant and low cost. The most promising oxide photocathodes are cuprous oxide (Cu2O) ...

Biological enzymes as source of hydrogen fuel

28-Nov-2019 - Research from the University of Illinois and the University of California, Davis has chemists one step closer to recreating nature's most efficient machinery for generating hydrogen gas. This new development may help clear the path for the hydrogen fuel industry to move into a larger role in the ...

Adapting natural membrane to make hydrogen fuel from water

14-Jan-2019 - A chemical reaction pathway central to plant biology have been adapted to form the backbone of a new process that converts water into hydrogen fuel using energy from the sun. In a recent study from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, scientists have combined two ...

Seeing the light

A solution for efficiency problem of artificial photosynthesis

07-Dec-2018 - Hydrogen-powered electronics, travel, and more may be a step closer thanks to the work of a collaborative team of scientists in Japan. The researchers have developed a new method to more efficiently produce a key component needed to convert solar energy and water into hydrogen fuel, a process ...

A solar cell that does double duty for renewable energy

Artificial photosynthesis system that generates hydrogen fuel and electricity at the same time

31-Oct-2018 - In the quest for abundant, renewable alternatives to fossil fuels, scientists have sought to harvest the sun's energy through "water splitting," an artificial photosynthesis technique that uses sunlight to generate hydrogen fuel from water. But water-splitting devices have yet to live up to their ...

A new nanocatalyst for obtaining hydrogen

19-Oct-2018 - A chemist from RUDN was the first to use catalysts with ruthenium nanoparticles to obtain hydrogen under the influence of visible light and UV radiation. In the future, such catalysts may be used for large-scale production of hydrogen fuel under the influence of sunlight.Photochemical reactions ...

More effective catalyst with light

Plasmonic effect allows catalyst to work at lower energy

08-Oct-2018 - Rice University nanoscientists have demonstrated a new catalyst that can convert ammonia into hydrogen fuel at ambient pressure using only light energy, mainly due to a plasmonic effect that makes the catalyst more efficient. A study from Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) describes the ...

A highly active organic photocatalyst

05-Oct-2018 - Scientists from the University of Liverpool, University College London and East China University of Science and Technology have synthesized a new organic material that can convert water into hydrogen fuel using sunlight. Photocatalytic solar hydrogen production--or water splitting--offers an ...

Production of solar fuels inches closer with news discovery

08-Feb-2018 - Caltech researchers have made a discovery that they say could lead to the economically viable production of solar fuels in the next few years. For years, solar-fuel research has focused on developing catalysts that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen using only sunlight. The resulting ...

New method could open path to hydrogen economy

02-Feb-2018 - Washington State University researchers have found a way to more efficiently generate hydrogen from water - an important key to making clean energy more viable. Using inexpensive nickel and iron, the researchers developed a very simple, five-minute method to create large amounts of a high-quality ...