Green hydrogen made by light on a catalytic surface

Green hydrogen is is currently made by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using a electrolysis or a fuel cell, powered by electricity that comes from renewable energy sources. What would be better if we could harness the natural system used in plants to use sunlight  directly to split water. Researchers at Technische Universität Wien are looking at new catalysts which are now making this possible, in a process called "photocatalytic water splitting". When this is done two different mechanisms have to be looked at, the oxygen atoms of the water must be transformed into O2 molecules, and the remaining hydrogen ions must be turned into H2 molecules.” Different teams have demonstrated exceptional electrochemical H2 generation from the MoS2 family of new catalysts and the clusters responsible for oxidising oxygen are made up of cobalt, tungsten and oxygen. Combining these two system could cheaply make Hydrogen and oxygen directly from light.


S. Batool et al., Surface-Anchoring and Active Sites of [Mo3S13]2- Clusters as Co-Catalysts for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution. ACS Catalysis, 2022, 12, 6641-6650. 

S.P. Nandan et al., Immobilization of a [CoIIICoII(H2O)W11O39]7- Polyoxoanion for Photocatalytic Oxygen Evolution Reaction, ACS Materials Au, 2022.



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