{"id":22619,"date":"2016-02-22T17:34:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T01:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/nanoscale-system-reaches-perfect-efficiency-for-solar-fuel-production-step"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:09:20","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:09:20","slug":"nanoscale-system-reaches-perfect-efficiency-for-solar-fuel-production-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/nanoscale-system-reaches-perfect-efficiency-for-solar-fuel-production-step","title":{"rendered":"Nanoscale system reaches perfect efficiency for solar fuel production step"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nanoscale-system-reaches-perfect-efficiency-for-solar-fuel-production-step.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A major goal in renewable energy research is to harvest the energy of the sun to convert water into hydrogen gas, a storable fuel. Now, with a nanoparticle-based system, researchers have set a record for one of the half-reactions in this process, reporting 100% efficiency for the reduction of water to hydrogen (<i>Nano Lett.<\/i> 2016, DOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/cgi.cen.acs.org\/cgi-bin\/cen\/trustedproxy.cgi?redirect=http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1021\/acs.nanolett.5b04813?source=cen\" title=\"Perfect Photon-to-Hydrogen Conversion Efficiency\">10.1021\/acs.nanolett.5b04813<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>To make such water-splitting systems, researchers must find the right materials to absorb light and catalyze the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen. The two half-reactions in this process\u2014the reduction of water to hydrogen gas, and the oxidation of water to oxygen gas\u2014must be isolated from each other so their products don\u2019t react and explode. \u201cCompleting the cycle in an efficient, stable, safe fashion with earth-abundant elements is an ongoing challenge,\u201d says chemist <a href=\"http:\/\/nsl.caltech.edu\/nslewis\" title=\"Nathan S. Lewis\">Nathan S. Lewis<\/a> of Caltech, who was not involved in this study.<\/p>\n<p>Until recently, the efficiency of the reduction step had maxed out at 60%. One challenge is that electrons and positive charges formed in the light absorption process can rapidly recombine, preventing the electrons from reducing water molecules to form hydrogen. To overcome this problem, several years ago, <a href=\"http:\/\/schulich.technion.ac.il\/Lilac_Amirav.htm\" title=\"Lilac Amirav\">Lilac Amirav<\/a> of Technion\u2013Israel Institute of Technology and her colleagues designed a nanoparticle-based system (<i>J. Phys. Chem. Lett.<\/i> 2010, DOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/cgi.cen.acs.org\/cgi-bin\/cen\/trustedproxy.cgi?redirect=http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1021\/jz100075c?source=cen\" title=\"Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production with Tunable Nanorod Heterostructures\">10.1021\/jz100075c<\/a>) that would physically separate the charges formed during photocatalysis.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/cen.acs.org\/articles\/94\/web\/2016\/02\/Nanoscale-system-reaches-perfect-efficiency.html\">http:\/\/cen.acs.org\/articles\/94\/web\/2016\/02\/Nanoscale-system-...iency.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A major goal in renewable energy research is to harvest the energy of the sun to convert water into hydrogen gas, a storable fuel. Now, with a nanoparticle-based system, researchers have set a record for one of the half-reactions in this process, reporting 100% efficiency for the reduction of water to hydrogen (Nano Lett. 2016, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,1635,4,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-materials","category-nanotechnology","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22619"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68287,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22619\/revisions\/68287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}