All-In-One Light-Driven Water Splitting
Solar-powered water splitting is a promising means of generating clean and storable energy. A novel catalyst based on semiconductor nanoparticles has now been shown to facilitate all the reactions needed for “artificial photosynthesis”.
. Image: C. Hohmann, NIM
Now, LMU physicists led by Dr. Jacek Stolarczyk and Professor Jochen Feldmann, in collaboration with chemists at the University of Würzburg led by Professor Frank Würthner, have succeeded in demonstrating the complete splitting of water with the help of an all-in-one catalytic system for the first time. Their new study appears in the journal Nature Energy.
Technical methods for the photocatalytic splitting of water molecules use synthetic components to mimic the complex processes that take place during natural photosynthesis. In such systems, semiconductor nanoparticles that absorb light quanta (photons) can, in principle, serve as the photocatalysts. Absorption of a photon generates a negatively charged particle (an electron) and a positively charged species known as a ‘hole’, and the two must be spatially separated so that a water molecule can be reduced to hydrogen by the electron and oxidized by the hole to form oxygen.
Nanorods with spatially separated reaction sites
“We solved the problem by using nanorods made of the semiconducting material cadmium sulfate, and spatially separated the areas on which the oxidation and reduction reactions occurred on these nanocrystals,” Stolarczyk explains. The researchers decorated the tips of the nanorods with tiny particles of platinum, which act as acceptors for the electrons excited by the light absorption. As the LMU group had previously shown, this configuration provides an efficient photocatalyst for the reduction of water to hydrogen. The oxidation reaction, on the other hand, takes place on the sides of the nanorod. To this end, , the LMU researchers attached to the lateral surfaces a ruthenium-based oxidation catalyst developed by Würthner‘s team. The compound was equipped with functional groups that anchored it to the nanorod.
Nature Energy 2018
Contacts and sources:
Citation: All-in-one visible-light-driven water splitting by combining nanoparticulate and molecular co-catalysts on CdS nanorods.
Christian M. Wolff, Peter D. Frischmann, Marcus Schulze, Bernhard J. Bohn, Robin Wein, Panajotis Livadas, Michael T. Carlson, Frank Jäckel, Jochen Feldmann, Frank Würthner, Jacek K. Stolarczyk. Nature Energy, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41560-018-0229-6
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2018/09/all-in-one-light-driven-water-splitting.html
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