Solar hydrogen production from seawater using stabilized plasmonic photocatalysts.

In 2012 international shipping emitted about 800 Mton CO2, 18.6 Mton NOx and 10.6 Mton SOx. It is expected that by 2050 these emissions will increase by 250% if no actions are taken. Therefore, scientific research for greener fuel alternatives is highly needed, and hydrogen has been identified as a promising candidate in that context. In this project, abundant seawater (rather than scarce pure water) will be split into hydrogen and oxygen gas using TiO2-based photocatalysts. The major drawback of TiO2 is the fact that it is only activated by ultraviolet (UV) light, corresponding to less than 5% of the incident solar spectrum on Earth. As a solution, the photocatalysts will be modified with ordered bimetallic gold-silver nanoparticles that strongly interact with sunlight. To ensure stability on the long term, even in the presence of a saline reaction environment, the plasmonic nanoparticles will be capped by a protective shell using wet-chemical synthesis techniques. The shell also acts as a spacer layer between the plasmonic cores that tunes the resulting interparticle distance and hot-spot formation. All structures will be thoroughly characterized down to the nanoscale, and action spectrum analysis will be performed in collaboration with Hokkaido University. Seawater splitting is only a very recently studied application. The use of plasmonic nanostructures in that regard is unprecedented, meaning the results from this project will move well beyond the state-of-the-art.

Keywords:TITANIUM DIOXIDE, PHOTOCATALYSIS

Disciplines:Surface and interface chemistry, Heterogeneous catalysis, Materials synthesis, Nanomaterials

Project type:Collaboration project