Boosting photocatalytic hydrogen production from water by photothermally induced biphase systems
Date
2021-02-26
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Nature Communications
Abstract
Solar-driven hydrogen production from water using particulate photocatalysts is considered the most economical and effective approach to produce hydrogen fuel with little environmental concern. However, the efficiency of hydrogen production from water in particulate photocatalysis systems is still low. Here, we propose an efficient biphase photocatalytic system composed of integrated photothermal–photocatalytic materials that use charred wood substrates to convert liquid water to water steam, simultaneously splitting hydrogen under light illumination without additional energy. The photothermal–photocatalytic system exhibits biphase interfaces of photothermally-generated steam/photocatalyst/hydrogen, which significantly reduce the interface barrier and drastically lower the transport resistance of the hydrogen gas by nearly two orders of magnitude. In this work, an impressive hydrogen production rate up to 220.74 μmol h−1 cm−2 in the particulate photocatalytic systems has been achieved based on the wood/CoO system, demonstrating that the photothermal–photocatalytic biphase system is cost-effective and greatly advantageous for practical applications.
Description
This article was originally published in Nature Communications. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21526-4. © The Author(s) 2021
Keywords
hydrogen energy, nanoscale materials, photocatalysis, solar thermal energy, affordable and clean energy
Citation
Guo, S., Li, X., Li, J. et al. Boosting photocatalytic hydrogen production from water by photothermally induced biphase systems. Nat Commun 12, 1343 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21526-4