Publication date: 31st March 2013
Forty years after the first reported photoelectrochemcial (PEC) water splitting experiment, the promise of hydrogen production from photoelectrochemical water splitting remains just that, a promise. Thousands of papers later and no material system has been identified that has the potential for commercial hydrogen production from the direct splitting of water using sunlight as the only energy input.
Recent technonomic analysis studies indicate that the solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiencies for a commercially viable PEC-based water splitting system need to approach 20%. The highest efficiency to-date for water splitting using visible light is the GaAs/GaInP2PV/PEC tandem cell with a published efficiency of 12.4%. This is not surprising since III-V based solar cells have the highest reported photovoltaic efficiency. Unfortunately, this material system has not shown the necessary long-term stability. Stabilizing the system using surface treatments or solution additives may be possible, but costs of the material still remain high.
Considerable work has been directed at metal oxides due to their expected low costs and stability, unfortunately little progress has been made here either, efficiencies for these oxide systems remain very low. Clearly new material systems must be discovered. Multi-component transition metal oxides are complex materials, making intuitive guesses difficult and a focused search very challenging. So to achieve suitable photo-electrode materials, the electronic properties of the materials and their response to defect formation must be understood. Strong electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions in oxides are responsible for the exotic quantum critical behaviors which are inherently difficult to study. A computational approach may be the only approach that can give us the necessary insight into these mixed metal oxides and allow us to narrow the composition space leading us towards a successful material.
This presentation will discuss the impact that economic considerations (e.g. the cost of the produced hydrogen) should have on our choice of semiconducting materials and structures. This will direct the discussion towards issues relating to metal oxides and the application of tandem cells for photoelectrochemical water splitting.
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