Photoelectrode splits water into hydrogen using sunlight
Producing hydrogen for fuel cells through this synthetic photosynthesis method would not only severely reduce carbon emissions, but would also create a virtually limitless energy source.
The team developed a photoelectrode that absorbs light before initializing electrochemical transformations to extract the hydrogen from water using nanoparticles of lanthanum, iron and oxygen.
Writing in Scientific Reports, the researchers say this new type of photo-electrode is not only cheap to produce, but can also be recreated on a larger scale for mass and worldwide use as it does not require an external bias.
Efforts to produce efficient stable semiconductor material, in order to effectively convert sunlight to a storable widespread energy source, have so far proved elusive. One of the most significant hindrances to the development of viable solar energy has been an inability to produce a semiconducting material suitable for the process.
“We have shown that our LaFeO3 photo-electrode has ideal band alignments needed to split water into its constituents (H2 and O2) spontaneously, without the need of an external bias,” said Govinder Pawar, lead author on the paper and based at the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute on the Penryn Campus in Cornwall. “Our material has excellent stability where after 21 hours of testing it does not degrade, ideal for water splitting purpose. We are currently working on further improving our material to make it more efficient to produce more hydrogen.”
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