{"id":5991,"date":"2012-07-18T22:26:45","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T22:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/?p=5991"},"modified":"2012-07-18T22:26:45","modified_gmt":"2012-07-18T22:26:45","slug":"direct-solar-to-hydrogen-conversion-low-cost-photoelectrodes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/direct-solar-to-hydrogen-conversion-low-cost-photoelectrodes\/","title":{"rendered":"Direct Solar-to-hydrogen Conversion: Low-cost Photoelectrodes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With continuously growing energy demands, new alternative energy solutions become essential. In order to achieve sustainability, efficient conversion and storage of solar energy are imperative<sup> [<a href=\"#footnote_0_5991\" id=\"identifier_0_5991\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"N. S. Lewis and D. G. Nocera, &ldquo;Powering the planet: Chemical challenges in solar energy utilization,&rdquo; Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. vol. 103, pp. 15729-15735, 2006.\">1<\/a>] <\/sup><sup> [<a href=\"#footnote_1_5991\" id=\"identifier_1_5991\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"R. van de Krol and Y. Liang, J. Schoonman, &ldquo;Solar hydrogen production with nanostructured metal oxides,&rdquo; J. Mater. Chem. vol. 18, pp. 2311-2320, 2008.\">2<\/a>] <\/sup>. \u00a0Photoelectrolysis utilizes solar energy to evolve hydrogen and oxygen from water, thereby enabling energy storage via chemical means. This work investigates photoelectrodes, which offer high conversion efficiency, long-term, stability and low cost. The focus is initially on semiconducting metal oxides in which the energy band-, defect-, and micro-structure are tuned to optimize optical absorption, charge transport, and reduced overpotentials. For high efficiency, a cobalt-based oxidation catalyst<sup> [<a href=\"#footnote_2_5991\" id=\"identifier_2_5991\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"M. W. Kanan and D. G. Nocera, &ldquo;In situ formation of an oxygen-evolving catalyst in neutral water containing phosphate and Co2+,&rdquo; Science, vol. 321, pp .1072-1075, 2008.\">3<\/a>] <\/sup> is implemented at the photoelectrode. The electro-deposition kinetics of this catalyst are studied as part of this project to allow further insights into the catalytic mechanism.<\/p>\n<ol class=\"footnotes\"><li id=\"footnote_0_5991\" class=\"footnote\">N. S. Lewis and D. G. Nocera, \u201cPowering the planet: Chemical challenges in solar energy utilization,\u201d <em>Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.<\/em> vol. 103, pp. 15729-15735, 2006. [<a href=\"#identifier_0_5991\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>] <\/li><li id=\"footnote_1_5991\" class=\"footnote\">R. van de Krol and Y. Liang, J. Schoonman, \u201cSolar hydrogen production with nanostructured metal oxides,\u201d <em>J. Mater. Chem. <\/em>vol. 18, pp. 2311-2320, 2008. [<a href=\"#identifier_1_5991\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>] <\/li><li id=\"footnote_2_5991\" class=\"footnote\">M. W. Kanan and D. G. Nocera, \u201cIn situ formation of an oxygen-evolving catalyst in neutral water containing phosphate and Co<sup>2+<\/sup>,\u201d <em>Science, <\/em>vol. 321, pp .1072-1075, 2008. [<a href=\"#identifier_2_5991\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>] <\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With continuously growing energy demands, new alternative energy solutions become essential. In order to achieve sustainability, efficient conversion and storage&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,8],"tags":[70,4107],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5991"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6340,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5991\/revisions\/6340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}