US scientists created nanocatalyst able to split water with record high efficiency
American physicists have developed a nanocatalyst based on compounds of chromium, rhodium, cobalt, indium and gallium, which is able to use about 9 percent of the total energy of sunlight to split water molecules and produce oxygen and hydrogen. In this respect it surpasses already existing photocatalysts, according to the press service of the University of Michigan, TASS reports.
“We have succeeded in creating a semiconductor catalytic structure that can withstand very high light loads, and at the same time reduce its size by more than 100 times compared to some semiconductors only working at low light intensity. Our discovery paves the way for the production of very cheap hydrogen,” said a researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (USA) Zhou Peng.
Over the past two decades, physicists have developed a large number of catalysts or water splitters capable of splitting moisture molecules into oxygen and hydrogen using light or electricity. At the same time, such systems are still far from practical use, which is hindered by both the high cost of hydrogen and oxygen production and the low durability of their components.
Zhou Peng and his colleagues note that the high cost of hydrogen and oxygen is associated with both the low durability of catalysts and their low level of efficiency, which does not exceed one percent. This means that such compounds use only 1 percent of the total energy of sunlight to split water molecules. This indicator is noticeably lower than the efficiency of photosynthesis in plant leaves and cyanobacteria cells.
