The majority of the 15 terawatts (1012 W) of new power needed across the globe by 2050 must come from CO2 -free sources. Hydrogen production via solar water splitting is considered one of the top choices to meet this need, because hydrogen produced via solar water splitting provides not only renewable and clean, but also storable energy. An award is being made to Profs. Yanfa Yan, Xunming Deng, and Wanjian Yin at the University of Toledo to develop the concepts and processes necessary to realize new metal oxides with the potential for producing low-cost, non-toxic, earth-abundant, and high efficiency photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting systems by closely integrating theoretical design, dedicated synthesis, device fabrication, and advanced characterization. These new design principles will fundamentally change the approach to discovery of new materials for PEC water splitting devices. It will avoid the usual ?trial-and-error? process and significantly speed up the process of developing new materials. This project offers training of postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate students to provide young scientists for future renewable energy research. The PIs will use the "Girls in Science" workshop at The University of Toledo, provide "Summer Research Opportunities" to local high school students, engage in the Research in Science and Engineering program partnering with Woodward High School in Toledo, and will provide a technology pipeline for Ohio?s Wright Center for PVIC, while PVIC provides industrial connections for the PIs and their students.
The overarching goal of this project is to design, synthesize, and validate new metal oxides that will not only have narrow band gaps and high optical absorptions, but also will meet other criteria for efficient photoelectrodes such as long carrier diffusion lengths, low non-radiative recombination, appropriate electrical conductivity, and high quantum yield. The PIs plan to propose and validate design principles at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels that will facilitate the design of new metal oxides that meet all the criteria for highly efficient photoelectrodes. Milestones will yield the following impacts: (1) A fundamental set of principles will be developed and validated for designing novel metal oxides with properties optimized for solar hydrogen production; (2) Novel bulk and thin-film methods will be developed for synthesizing the targeted metal oxides in single-phase form and with appropriate grain/film structure to enable validation of the technologies in functioning PEC water splitting devices; (3) New metal oxides capable for efficient and stable PEC water splitting and which are low-cost and non-toxic will be developed; (4) Overall PEC water splitting systems will be fabricated to evaluate the ultimate performance of the new metal oxides and will be disseminated to the scientific community; (5) The fundamental properties of the new oxides, junctions, interfaces, and devices will be characterized and understood to provide critical feedback for goals 1-3 and to further validate the design criteria.
