Making Hydrogen Fuel from Water and Visible Light Highly Efficient

Mimicking photosynthesis is not easy. The bottleneck of artificial photosynthesis is visible light, because converting it into other forms of energy is not efficient. Researchers at Michigan Technological University have found a way to solve this issue, leading to an efficient technique to produce hydrogen fuel. Last week, the Journal of Physical Chemistry published their work.

The technique was developed by Yun Hang Hu, the Charles and Carroll McArthur professor of Materials Science and Engineer, and his PhD student, Bing Han, at Michigan Tech.

“Hydrogen is the future of cars,” says Hu. “And if you want to power hydrogen cars, you have to make hydrogen fuels.”

In this new hydrogen production process, the key is the interactions of a catalyst, light and a sacrificial molecule.

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Interesting details from the comment section:

Water and methanol were consumed, whereas titanium oxide remained unchanged in the process.

The apparent quantum efficiency (QE) is 65.7% for entire visible light range.