Proceedings of nanoGe September Meeting 2017 (NFM17)
Publication date: 20th June 2016
The cost of photovoltaic systems decrease has decreased rapidly where now the cost of the solar panels is now exceeded by balance of systems cost. The cost of electrolyzers will be decreasing as they are scaled and have the advantage of producing hydrogen where you want it and when you want it and at pressure. These facts mean that the window for direct solar photoelectrolysis is rapidly closing. The only hope is that a new stable, efficient, inexpensive, defect-tolerant and scalable new materials are identified that can quickly improve the efficiency of photoelectrolysis much like the hybrid perovskites are have done for photovoltaic devices. This talk will review the progress in combinatorial approaches to discover new materials for photoelectrolysis with some examples including one from the Solar Hydrogen activity Research Kit (SHArK) Project, a distributed science project that provides undergraduates and high school students with the resources to produce and screen metal oxide semiconductors for photoelectrolysis activity. In addition the reasons for producing hydrogen from water rather than direct carbon dioxide reduction to produce fuels will be reviewed. A new system for storing solar energy directly as redox equivalents, a solar chargeable redox flow battery, will also be introduced and its advantages and disadvantages compared to solar hydrogen generation will be discussed.