Less is more: Why an economical Iridium catalyst works so well

Different chemical environments explored

10-Dec-2024 - Iridium-based catalysts are needed to produce hydrogen using water electrolysis. Now, a team at HZB has shown that the newly developed P2X catalyst, which requires only a quarter of the Iridium, is as efficient and stable over time as the best commercial catalyst. Measurements at BESSY II have ...

Green hydrogen: MXenes shows talent as catalyst for oxygen evolution

Catalysts based on MXenes are more stable and efficient than conventional catalysts: Investigations are now revealing the reasons for this

12-Sep-2024 - The MXene class of materials has many talents. An international team led by HZB chemist Michelle Browne has now demonstrated that MXenes, properly functionalised, are excellent catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction in electrolytic water splitting. They are more stable and efficient than the ...

Green hydrogen: ‘Artificial leaf’ becomes better under pressure

Findings can increase the efficiency of electrochemical and photocatalytic devices

02-Aug-2024 - Hydrogen can be produced via the electrolytic splitting of water. One option here is the use of photoelectrodes that convert sunlight into voltage for electrolysis in so called photoelectrochemical cells (PEC cells). A research team at HZB has now shown that the efficiency of PEC cells can be ...

Surface analysis of catalyst particles in aqueous solutions

The results are relevant for the development of efficient photoelectrodes for the production of green hydrogen

25-Jul-2023 - Green hydrogen can be produced directly in a photoelectrochemical cell, splitting water with solar energy. However, this requires the development of super-efficient photoelectrodes that need to combine many talents at the same time: They must be excellent at converting sunlight into electricity, ...

Electrocatalysis: Iron and Cobalt Oxyhydroxides examined at BESSY II

20-Feb-2023 - A team led by Dr. Prashanth W. Menezes (HZB/TU-Berlin) has now gained insights into the chemistry of one of the most active anode catalysts for green hydrogen production. They examined a series of Cobalt-Iron Oxyhydroxides at BESSY II and were able to determine the oxidation states of the active ...

Photocatalysis: Processes in charge separation recorded experimentally

The results provide clues to increase the efficiency of photocatalysts

11-Nov-2022 - Certain metal oxides are considered good candidates for photocatalysts to produce green hydrogen with sunlight. A Chinese team has now published exciting results on copper(I) oxide particles in Nature, to which a method developed at HZB contributed significantly. Transient surface photovoltage ...

Solar hydrogen: Better photoelectrodes through flash heating

"The heat efficiently reduces structural defects, trap states, grain boundaries, and phase impurities"

07-Apr-2022 - Producing low-cost metal-oxide thin films with high electronic quality for solar water splitting is not an easy task. Especially since quality improvements of the upper metal oxide thin films need thermal processing at high temperatures, which would melt the underlying glass substrate. Now, a ...

Green hydrogen: "Rust" as a photoanode and its limits

“With this new approach, we have added a powerful tool to our arsenal that enables us to identify the realizable potential of photoelectrode materials"

21-Apr-2021 - Metal oxides such as rust are intriguing photoelectrode materials for the production of green hydrogen with sunlight. They are cheap and abundant, but in spite of decades of research, progress has been limited. A team at HZB, together with partners from Ben Gurion University and the Technion, ...

Solar hydrogen: Let’s consider the stability of photoelectrodes

How the stability of photoelectrodes and catalysts can be compared and enhanced in the future

28-Oct-2020 - As part of an international collaboration, a team at the HZB has examined the corrosion processes of high-quality BiVO4 photoelectrodes using different state-of-the-art characterisation methods. The result is the first operando stability study of high-purity BiVO4 photoanodes during the ...

New world record for direct solar water-splitting efficiency

06-Jul-2018 - Hydrogen will play a central role as a storage medium in sustainable energy systems. An international team of researchers has now succeeded in raising the efficiency of producing hydrogen from direct solar water-splitting to a record 19 per cent. They did so by combining a tandem solar cell of ...