{"id":1232,"date":"2013-07-25T18:27:16","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T18:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2013-07-25T18:27:16","modified_gmt":"2013-07-25T18:27:16","slug":"direct-solar-to-hydrogen-conversion-low-cost-photoelectrodes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/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, alternative emission-free solar-energy solutions become ever more attractive. However, to achieve sustainability, efficient conversion and storage of solar energy is imperative<sup>[<a href=\"#footnote_0_1232\" id=\"identifier_0_1232\" 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_1232\" id=\"identifier_1_1232\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"R. van de Krol, Y. Liang, and J. Schoonman, &ldquo;Solar hydrogen production with nanostructured metal oxides,&rdquo; J. Mater. Chem. vol. 18, pp. 2311-2320, 2008.\">2<\/a>]<\/sup>. Photoelectrolysis harnesses solar energy to evolve hydrogen and oxygen from water, thereby enabling energy storage via chemical means. This work investigates photoelectrodes that offer high conversion efficiency, long-term stability, and low cost. The focus is initially on semiconducting metal oxides in which the energy bands, the defect chemistry, and microstructures are tuned to optimize optical absorption, charge transport, and to reduce overpotentials. For high efficiency, transition metal-based oxidation catalysts<sup>[<a href=\"#footnote_2_1232\" id=\"identifier_2_1232\" 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> are implemented at the photoelectrode. The electro-deposition kinetics of these catalysts are also investigated to allow further insights into the catalytic mechanisms.<\/p>\n<ol class=\"footnotes\"><li id=\"footnote_0_1232\" class=\"footnote\">N. S. Lewis and D. G. Nocera, \u201cPowering the planet: Chemical challenges in solar energy utilization,\u201d <i>Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.<\/i> vol. 103, pp. 15729-15735, 2006. [<a href=\"#identifier_0_1232\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/li><li id=\"footnote_1_1232\" class=\"footnote\">R. van de Krol, Y. Liang, and J. Schoonman, \u201cSolar hydrogen production with nanostructured metal oxides,\u201d <i>J. Mater. Chem. <\/i>vol. 18, pp. 2311-2320, 2008. [<a href=\"#identifier_1_1232\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/li><li id=\"footnote_2_1232\" 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 <i>Science <\/i>vol. 321, pp. 1072-1075, 2008. [<a href=\"#identifier_2_1232\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With continuously growing energy demands, alternative emission-free solar-energy solutions become ever more attractive. However, to achieve sustainability, efficient conversion and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[70,4107],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2124,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions\/2124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}