Environmentally-Friendly Fuel: Solar-to-Hydrogen Conversion

New research shows how the sun is capable of generating energy to power vehicles. According to researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the chemical hydrogen actually contains the potential to power passenger cars as an environmentally friendly fuel.  

For the study, researchers used cheap and oxide-based materials that actually split water into hydrogen and oxygen cases. This process combines solar energy with a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of approximately 1.7 percent.

"In order to make commercially viable devices for solar fuel production, the material and the processing costs should be reduced significantly while achieving a high solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency," said Kyoung-Shin Choi, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, via a press release. 

Researchers note that the efficiency found in this process is the highest reported for any oxide-based photo-electrode system.

"Without fancy equipment, high temperature or high pressure, we made a nanoporous semiconductor of very tiny particles that have a high surface area," added Choi, via the release. "More surface area means more contact area with water, and, therefore, more efficient water splitting."

As researchers continue to work on photoelectric semiconductors, they note that the semiconductor-catalyst junction receives relatively little attention.

"The problem is, in the end you have to put them together," she concluded, via the release. "Even if you have the best semiconductor in the world and the best catalyst in the world, their overall efficiency can be limited by the semiconductor-catalyst interface."

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Science.