Skip to main content

Record-Breaking Solar Hydrogen Device: Turning Sunlight Into Clean Energy

 


International Conference on Nuclear Physics

 

Rice University engineers have developed a device that can convert sunlight into hydrogen with unprecedented efficiency. The device, a photoelectrochemical cell, incorporates next-gen halide perovskite semiconductors and electrocatalysts. It stands as a potential platform for chemical reactions using solar energy to convert feedstocks into fuels. (Artist’s concept.)




Rice University engineers can turn sunlight into hydrogen with record-breaking efficiency thanks to a device that combines next-generation halide perovskite semiconductors with electrocatalysts in a single, durable, cost-effective and scalable device




The new technology is a significant step forward for clean energy and could serve as a platform for a wide range of chemical reactions that use solar-harvested electricity to convert feedstocks into fuels.

Revolutionary Photoreactor Design



Aditya Mohite’s lab, specializing in chemical and biomolecular engineering, spearheaded the construction of this integrated photoreactor. A key element in the device’s design is an anticorrosion barrier that effectively insulates the semiconductor from water without impeding electron transfer. As reported in a study published in Nature Communications, the device boasts an impressive 20.8% solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency.



Austin Fehr, a chemical and biomolecular engineering doctoral student and one of the lead authors of the study, emphasized the importance of this work. “Using sunlight as an energy source to manufacture chemicals is one of the largest hurdles to a clean energy economy. Our goal is to build economically feasible platforms that can generate solar-derived fuels. Here, we designed a system that absorbs light and completes electrochemical water-splitting chemistry on its surface.”
Overcoming Challenges With Photoelectrochemical Cells

The device is known as a photoelectrochemical cell because the absorption of light, its conversion into electricity and the use of the electricity to power a chemical reaction all occur in the same device. Until now, using photoelectrochemical technology to produce green hydrogen was hampered by low efficiencies and the high cost of semiconductors.



Fehr explained the distinction of their invention: “All devices of this type produce green hydrogen using only sunlight and water, but ours is exceptional because it has record-breaking efficiency and it uses a semiconductor that is very cheap.”
Innovation Journey and Future Perspectives

The Mohite lab and its collaborators created the device by turning their highly-competitive solar cell into a reactor that could use harvested energy to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. The challenge they had to overcome was that halide perovskites are extremely unstable in water and coatings used to insulate the semiconductors ended up either disrupting their function or damaging them.

“Over the last two years, we’ve gone back and forth trying different materials and techniques,” said Michael Wong, a Rice chemical engineer and co-author on the study.

After lengthy trials failed to yield the desired result, the researchers finally came across a winning solution.

“Our key insight was that you needed two layers to the barrier, one to block the water and one to make good electrical contact between the perovskite layers and the protective layer,” Fehr said. “Our results are the highest efficiency for photoelectrochemical cells without solar concentration, and the best overall for those using halide perovskite semiconductors.

“It is a first for a field that has historically been dominated by prohibitively expensive semiconductors, and may represent a pathway to commercial feasibility for this type of device for the first time ever,” Fehr said.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nuclear power: The safer and cheaper alternative to fossil fuels

Image
As countries across the globe struggle to balance their desire for a reliable energy supply with their contribution to climate change, nuclear power presents a solution. The global reliance on fossil fuels is a function of our energy needs, and although there have been numerous initiatives implemented in order to reduce demand, such as levying large taxes on air transport, appropriate sources of supply still need to be defined. Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas have the benefit of being capable of servicing our energy needs. However, they are a chief contributor to climate change, and as countries attempt to meet the Paris Agreement of keeping global temperature below 2o above pre-industrial levels, non-carbon energy sources are essential. Positives and negatives So, what are the pros and cons of nuclear power as a safer, cheaper alternative to fossil fuels? Well, where renewable sources such as wind or solar are clean, they are also intermittent, require an uneven geographical
Read more

Physicists Detect Subatomic Neutrinos Made by a Particle Collider for the First Time

Image
  International Conference on Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics Research Excellence In a scientific first, a team led by physicists at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) has detected neutrinos created by a particle collider. The discovery promises to deepen scientists’ understanding of the subatomic particles, which were first spotted in 1956 and play a key role in the process that makes stars burn. The work could also shed light on cosmic neutrinos that travel large distances and collide with the Earth, providing a window on distant parts of the universe. It’s the latest result from the Forward Search Experiment, or FASER, a particle detector designed and built by an international group of physicists and installed at CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. There, FASER detects particles produced by CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. “We’ve discovered neutrinos from a brand-new source – particle colliders – where you have two beams of particles sma
Read more

Physics Breakthrough: Scientists Discover Rydberg Moiré Excitons

Image
International Conference on Nuclear Physics The Rydberg state is prevalent across various physical mediums such as atoms, molecules, and solid materials. Rydberg excitons, which are highly energized, Coulomb-bound electron-hole pair states, were initially identified in the 1950s within the semiconductor material, Cu2O. In a study published in Science, Dr. Xu Yang and his colleagues from the Institute of Physics (IOP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with researchers led by Dr. Yuan Shengjun of Wuhan University, have reported observing Rydberg moiré excitons, which are moiré-trapped Rydberg excitons in the monolayer semiconductor WSe2 adjacent to small-angle twisted bilayer graphene (TBG). The solid-state nature of Rydberg excitons, combined with their large dipole moments, strong mutual interactions, and greatly enhanced interactions with the surroundings, holds promise for a wide range of applications in sensing, quantum optics, and quantum simulation. Howeve
Read more