Publication date: 15th December 2014
Providing energy for our planet in a sustainable way is one of the biggest challenges of this century. Among renewable sources of energy, sunlight is by far the most exploitable one, being inexpensive, non-polluting and abundant. Yet efficient harvesting, conversion and storage of solar energy remain a major challenge for smoothing out the temporal fluctuations of solar power and allowing on-demand use. Solar to chemical energy conversion, i.e. production of a fuel that carries a high energetic density stored within chemical bonds, is very promising. In particular, hydrogen produced through water splitting has emerged as a potential fuel for sustainable energy cycles, because its oxidation ‘back’ to water in a fuel-cell efficiently restitutes the stored energy, in the form of electricity and without waste. Up to now, solar hydrogen generation is efficient only in systems that use expensive photovoltaic cells to power electrolysis. Direct and low cost production of hydrogen from sunlight and water would be an ideal long-term solution, but is still a challenging issue. To that aim, photocathodes have been developed with organic solar cell based on a poly-3-hexylthiophene (P3HT): phenyl-C61-butyric acid (PCBM) bulk hetero-junction directly coupled with molybdenum sulfide catalyst for the production of hydrogen. Both the light-harvesting system and the catalyst were deposited by low-cost solution-processed methods, i.e. spin coating and spray coating respectively. Spray-coated MoS3 films are catalytically active in strongly acidic aqueous solutions with the best efficiencies for thicknesses of 40 to 90 nm. The photocathodes display photocurrents higher than reference samples, without catalyst or without coupling with a solar cell. Analysis by gas chromatography confirms the light-induced hydrogen evolution. The addition of titanium dioxide in the MoS3 film enhances electron transport within thick films and therefore the performance of the photocathode.1
1- A H-2-evolving photocathode based on direct sensitization of MoS3 with an organic photovoltaic cell, T. Bourgeteau, D. Tondelier, B. Geffroy, R. Brisse, C. Laberty-Robert, S. Campidelli, R. de Bettignies, V. Artero, S. Palacin, B. Jousselme, Energy Environ. Sci., 2013, 6, 2706.
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