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Super-Efficient Solar to Hydrogen System Uses Earth-Abundant Materials

At the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), scientists have developed methods for generating fuels such as hydrogen through solar water splitting. To do this, they either use photoelectrochemical cells that directly split water into hydrogen and oxygen when exposed to sunlight, or they combine electricity-generating cells with an electrolyzer that separates the water molecules. By combining a pair of solar cells made with the mineral perovskite and low-cost electrodes, EPFL scientists have now obtained a 12.3% conversion efficiency from solar energy to hydrogen - a record using earth-abundant materials as opposed to rare metals. Perovskite cells can generate an open circuit voltage greater than 1 V - for comparison, silicon cells stop at 0.7 V. The conversion of solar energy into hydrogen makes its storage possible, which addresses one of the biggest disadvantages faced by renewable electricity - the requirement to use it at the time it is produced.

Topics:
Electronic Components Electronics & Computers Energy Energy Efficiency Energy Storage Materials Power Renewable Energy Semiconductors & ICs Solar Power

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    Transcript

    00:00:06 staring the solar energy is the main challenge now now we want to use the approach to convert the solar energy directly into hydrogen fuel the laboratory of photonics and interface in epfl is focusing on developing lowc cost solar cell uh like a dis sensitized solar cell which is evented here and also the the resonance developed a paraset solar cell so we just uh

    00:00:33 combining the lowcost solar cell together with cheap but efficient uh with a splitting Catalyst which is a nickel ion layer double hydroxide which is Earth abundant low cost for the first time we find out that this Catalyst could also be used for the hydrogen generation that means this Catalyst it's a bifunctional catalyst it can be used both for the oxygen Evolution and

    00:01:03 hydrogen Evolution and by combining the parasal solar cell with this kinds of catalyst the system is uh very low cost but we have achieved 12.3% solo to hydrogen efficiency